Take decisive action against illegal coal mining: Assam regional party to PM
The Hindu
Assam Jatiya Parishad urges PM Modi to take action against illegal rat-hole mining, highlighting government officials' negligence.
GUWAHATI
A regional political party in Assam has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take decisive action against political leaders and government officials responsible for illegal rat-hole mining, resulting in the loss of lives and environmental degradation in blatant violation of repeated directions by the Supreme Court.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) also underlined the futility of forming an inquiry commission to probe the January 6 rat-hole mining disaster in Dima Hasao district’s Umrangso, while ignoring previous findings. This was with reference to Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s decision to constitute a panel headed by retired judge Anima Hazarika to investigate the illegal coal mining operations in the district.
Nine miners were trapped in a flooded rat-hole mine in the Kalamati area of Dima Hasao on January 6. Rescue workers from multiple agencies, including the Indian Navy and Army, have retrieved the bodies of four miners so far.
The Chief Minister said draining the ill-fated mine and other interconnected abandoned mines would take 25-60 days.
“This [Dima Hasao] incident is not an isolated occurrence but part of a larger systemic issue of illegal coal mining facilitated by the Assam government,” AJP president Lurinjyoti Gogoi and general secretary Jagadish Bhuyan wrote, referring to the Chief Minister’s “contradictory statements” relating to the mining mishap.
They said the Chief Minister acknowledged the presence of 220 illegal rat-hole mines around the incident site after claiming they were abandoned by the Assam Mineral Development Corporation (AMDC) and inactive for over 12 years.
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