Chief Minister M.Okay. Stalin on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to exclude the Cauvery delta areas from the bidding for coal blocks. He identified that two blocks in the State fall throughout the zone protected below the Tamil Nadu Protected Agriculture Zone Development Act, 2020, and the opposite block was in a serious paddy rising space.
Neither was the concurrence of the Tamil Nadu authorities obtained earlier than the tender was floated, nor was the State consulted in this matter, he identified. “It is unfortunate that the Ministry of Coal has proceeded unilaterally with no consultation with the States in such a sensitive matter,” he stated.
The Ministry of Coal has put up 101 blocks throughout the nation for auction and three of them are in Tamil Nadu — East of Sethiathope, Michaelpatti and Vadaseri. They occur to fall throughout the Protected Agricultural Zone.
Mr. Stalin added that this difficulty has the potential to trigger “considerable disquiet” in the Cauvery delta areas, which constitutes the primary meals producing space for the State.
Pointing out that the current tender circumstances included the exploitation of coal-bed methane and therefore had been coated throughout the prohibition of the 2020 Act, Mr. Stalin contended that it implied that even when the tender course of was carried out and a profitable bidder recognized, it might not be potential to take up the mining venture.
“Hence, the auction process is a wasteful exercise in so far as the identified blocks in Tamil Nadu are concerned. Had the State government been consulted prior to the issue of the notification, these issues could have been clarified and the unnecessary disquiet caused by the issue of the notification for auction could have been avoided,” he defined.
As beneficial agricultural land was concerned and the meals safety of individuals of Tamil Nadu was at stake, it might be acceptable if the three mining blocks had been excluded from the auction course of by the difficulty of a corrigendum, he stated. A replica of the Chief Minister’s letter was circulated to the media.
Calling for future consultations with the States by the Union Ministries involved earlier than public notifications are issued, he sought Mr Modi’s pressing intervention to rectify the state of affairs attributable to the difficulty of the present notification by the Ministry of Coal.
Vadaseri and East of Sethiathope fall throughout the Protected Agricultural Zone, whereas Michaelpatti falls in a serious paddy rising space adjoining a really fertile half of the Cauvery delta.
Under Section 4(1) of the 2020 Act, “no person shall undertake any new project or new activity specified in the Second Schedule in the protected agricultural zone”. The tasks coated in the Second Schedule embody “exploration, drilling and extraction of oil and natural gas, including coal-bed methane, shale gas and other similar hydrocarbons”.
