Shillong, July 6: Chief Minister Conrad Sangma has expressed difficulty on the part of state to completely stop illegal mining and transportation of coal.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Conrad, however, said efforts are on to control illegalities and there are different laws that are in place for people who are into illegal activities of coal mining.
“Actions are being taken and thousands of cases have been registered and thousands of people have been arrested and charge sheeted. As far as possible our efforts are on to ensure that we are able to minimize it. Number two, you also have to realise the reality of things…that people have been engaging in this form of mining for the last 200 years and the livelihood has been based around that and unless and until alternate forms of livelihood don’t come up, people will keep on going back to those activities. It is not possible for administration to completely stop everything but the effort is on,” he said.
“We are happy to see that now the legal mining process is going to start as four miners got the nod and we will have scientific mining and we will see those things and on the other side we are also having different kinds of livelihood that are coming up whether it is in the agriculture sector or tourism sector and that is the only way we can ultimately see that we are able to put an end to this kind of activity”.
To a question on drone technology, the chief minister said, “It is a more complicated than said because areas is huge and well we have drones but we will require large number of drones and we have used drone technology already in the past to map the entire stock of the coal that are there whether legal or illegal and that has been submitted to court and that has been going on but as you said it is continuous process and that will require us to put 100s of drones and then working every day to keep mapping it is an option we can examine and look into some areas but as I said there are obviously financial and administrative as well as manpower requirement that are there so we will have to see how it works as technology as of now has been used as I said to even map the stock of the coal that are there.”
Power sector
The chief minister said until and unless there is a mix of production, it will be impossible for the state to provide complete stable sources of energy in the long run.
The state requires about 1,700 million units of power every year out of which its own production is about 1000 to 1100 million units of power every year and hence, there is a shortfall of about 600 to 700 million units” he said.
The shortfall is met by the share the state gets from central agencies and the rest the state buys from the market.
Hence, that is the kind of situation we face. So approximately about 30% deficiency in terms of the requirement of the thing is there but that is one part, he said.
“The second part of the problem we face is that since everything is hydro based and whenever the water level is low it affects all the units including the central units. Hence, until and unless we have a mix of production it is not possible to really give complete stable sources of energy in the long run,” he said.
Admitting that the issue is complicated, Conrad said, “But we are on the job and I have given some idea about the kind of difficult decisions that we need to make and we are sitting on it and we have started the process of solar aspect. Again solar is not a stable supply it is something that depends on the sunshine that is available. Hence all these factors have to be looked into and we are hopeful we are able to slowly and steadily start finding more concrete solutions to these issues.”, he said.
Cantonment land
The chief minister spoke to the union defence minister Rajnath Singh for transferring cantonment land to the state.
There are two parts of the cantonment areas, one is the military zones and the other is the civil zones.
“There is a discussion going on with the Government of India to transfer the civil zones of the cantonment board to the municipal board. It is in a very advanced stage and we do expect positive results from the Government of India,” the chief minister said.
To a question on the area of transfer, Conrad said, “It will all depend on what the rules say, it is not about what I want or what anybody wants, it all depends on rules and depends on the government of India and defence ministry what direction they give.”
