The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has accepted all the recommendations made by a committee set up by it while castigating the Meghalaya government for raising “uncalled for” objections.
In its order issued on Friday, the tribunal accepted the recommendations that Justice (retd) B.P. Katakey and his team made in three interim reports.
Some of the recommendations include monitoring of illegal raising and transportation of coal by the state’s chief secretary, punitive measures for illegal mining, filling up gaps in the regulatory regime and action for preventing and mitigating environment pollution by acidic water from coal depots.
The committee also recommended electronic recording of movement of coal, including global positioning system (GPS) and radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and having a central server for the purpose, establishing and supervising checkposts and weigh bridges, utilisation of the compensation amount for legitimate purposes in terms of the recommendations in the report, monitoring of sourcing of illegally-mined coal by cement manufacturing/thermal power plants for enforcement of mining law, including punitive and remedial actions for sourcing of illegally-mined material as found by the committee.
Further, it recommended preparation of geological report and feasibility report for scientific coal mining, compiling information about location of dumps of coal, finalising mode and manner of handling of coal and its disposal including e-auction, transfer of coal to Coal India Ltd, monitoring of illegal export of coal to Bangladesh by an independent agency and adopting satellite surveillance systems, among others.
“Under the circumstances, while accepting all the recommendations of the committee in its fourth interim report dated August 31, 2019, fifth interim report dated December 2, 2019 and sixth interim report dated December 3, 2019. We also accept the request of Justice B.P. Katakey, former judge, Gauhati High Court, to be relieved,” the tribunal said.
Katakey had tendered his resignation from the post of chairperson of the committee last year.
Moreover, the tribunal had perused objections to the reports of the committee filed by the state government.
“During the hearing, we confronted learned senior counsel for the state of Meghalaya with the fact that since the work of the committee has been commended by the Hon’ble Supreme Court as well as by this tribunal earlier, the nature of objections are not appreciable,” the tribunal noted.
The tribunal also said that it was unable to “appreciate” the reasons given by the state government for its stand that the recommendations are not feasible.