Andhra Pradesh

Mining expansion may displace many families

YELLANDU ( Khammam dt): The Singareni Collieries Company Limited has plans for taking open cast mining in the JK 5 incline and it is likely to result in displacement of 1,600 families. The residents in the affected localities are up in arms against the move and backed by the local leadership of all the political parties, they are out to stall the expansion programme.

Residential localities such as Medarbasti, Aambasti, Potenumberbasti and Hamali basti would bear the brunt of the extension. The company completed the survey and undertook marking in the pockets found to bear rich coal deposits. Families migrated to the town from different states while the English people started mining activity here, had put up pucca structures and they are reluctant to give up even a single inch of the land in their occupation. CPI (ML New Democracry) leader and local MLA, Gummadi Narsaiah said that the issue was represented to the Prime Minister as well.

A delegation of the oustees had met the Union Minister of State for Coal and Mines Dasari Narayana Rao and the Union Minister of State for Women and Child Development in New Delhi last week and urged them to intervene and help spare the town from the mining activity. Both Ministers had responded positively. The Yellandu MLA said the only way out to save the town was to go in for an indefinite stir.

He said he had discussed the issue with the Singareni authorities and appraised them of the concern expressed by the residents.

He said he was not against conversion of the underground mine into an open cast as part of the expansion programme. Some 1,200 acres of area was identified for the purpose.

“We want the company to restrict its mining activity to 1,100 acres of it and spare the town.”

The company would not lose much by sparing some 70 acres of area falling mainly in the town limits, he said.

A senior officer of the SCCL said much of the area to be affected by the expansion of mining in the town was encroached upon at one time. Still the company was keen on rehabilitating them by implementing a good package.

The energy needs of the State were of priority. However, the company had to take the final decision on the fate of the dwellings likely to be affected only after the public hearing to be organised shortly.

“We can relocate the people by giving them a better package, but not the coal reserves,” said the official.

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