: The latest accident following land subsidence at an open-cast coal mine in the black diamond belt of Raniganj in West Burdwan district of West Bengal on October 11 night killing three persons has once again highlighted the havoc created by illegal mining which is rampant in the region.
Although the official death figure as mentioned by the Asansol-Durgapur Police Commisionerate is three, the BJP legislator from Asansol (South) Agnimitra Paul has put the figure at seven.
Both the sides are in agreement that the victims were part of the local coal smuggling racket and the land subsidence happened when they went into the mine belonging to Eastern Coalfields Limited (ECL), a subsidiary of Coal India Limited, for the purpose of illegal mining.
As usual, a political slugfest has erupted in the state over this incident. On the one hand, Paul has claimed that because of the abject poverty in the region the local people are getting involved in coal smuggling. “Courtesy the state government, there is no scope of employment. So a section of the poor people in the area is getting involved in the coal smuggling and illegal mining racket. They enter the mines without the minimum precaution like helmets. Such things are quite common in these areas,” she said.
On the other hand, Trinamool Congress state vice-president Jaiprakash Majumdar accused Paul of doing politics over bodies. “The event is tragic. It is our duty now to first stand by the family members of the victims. It is not the time for politics over bodies, which BJP leaders often do,” he said.
But despite the instances of illegal mining and the resulting land subsidence being rampant in the region for so many year, there has not beenany initiative to end this menace from any quarter — be it the district administration or the district police or the Asansol-Durgapur Development Authority (ADDA) or the ECL.
Nor has there been much progress, except the usual Centre versus the state blame game, with regard to the relocation and rehabilitation of people who continue to stay in the subsidence-prone zones.
The Trinamool Congress-controlled ADDA authorities have claimed that they have received only Rs 150 crore as against the Centre’s announced rehabilitation package of Rs 2,600 crore. The state BJP leadership including former Asansol Municipal Corporation mayor Jitendra Tiwari claimed that rampant corruption by ADDA in the utilization of the central funds is pushing Raniganj towards this crisis.
While the latest accident has taken place in an open-cast coal mine, experts feel that the bigger danger lies in the land subsidence because of illegal mining in the abandoned mines of ECL.
Can the ECL escape responsibility? The answer is definitely “No.”The remedy lies in the standard operating procedure that needs to be followed by the coal excavation unit in case of abandoned mines.
When regular mining takes place, the coal is excavated leaving pillars of coal blocks, which act as the support for the roof of the mines. It is the duty of the coal excavating entity to fill up the gaps between the pillars after abandoning the mines with a sand-soil-water mixture, so that the illegal miners are unable to target the coal block pillars.
But since there is blatant negligence in that filling up process, the smugglers target those pillars and start excavating coal from them. In this process the pillars become weak and the land subsidence happens. This negligence in filling up happens because of the alleged nexus between the officials of the legitimate coal mining entity and the smugglers.
Even the Supreme Court in 2004 fixed the responsibility on the coal excavation entity of filling up the abandoned mines.
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