Amazon of the North-East: Dehing Patkai

 I’m pretty sure that most of you don’t even know or have never heard about the matter about which I’m writing today. I too didn’t knew much about it but thanks to YouTube and Google baba from where I got some enlightenment.

Dehing Patkai Elephant Reserve

Today I’m writing about Dehing Patkai. Yeah, many of you don’t know what this stuff is.
It’s a beautiful rainforest in Assam called Dehing Patkai Elephant Reserve which is spread across 575 sq km area. Dehing Patkai Wildlife Sanctuary and Saleki Reserve are also parts of it. Its a home to many animal and bird species, and also called the Amazon of the North East India.

Dehing Patkai is a home to numerous species, some being endangered

It’s in the news since past few days, obviously not much in the ‘national media’.The reason for it being in the news is Coal Mining.

North Eastern Coal Fields (NECF), a unit of Coal India Limited (CIL) which is a state-owned coal mining and refinery company, does coal mining in the regions of the Northeast. It was granted lease for coal mining in the Saleki Reserve area for 30 years, which ended in 2003. But after that too NECF continued its coal mining illegally. It tried to get permission in 2012 but it’s plea was rejected. It again appealed in 2019 for 98.59 hectare land out of which it was already mining on 57.20 hectares illegally.

Illegal coal mining was done by CIL since 2003

The proposal was sent to National Board of Wildlife (NBWL) which comes under the Central Government’s Environment Ministry. In April 2020, a meeting was held by a committee of NBWL in which they discussed that 57.20 hectares of land is already being mined and the rest of land is fresh with many species living there. After much discussion the committee gave its approval to CIL on 7 April, 2020.

And there the problem starts. Now many students from the Universities and Colleges of Assam are protesting against it on social media and many are also out from there homes to protest against it.
And now the Forest Minister of Assam has said that they won’t allow opencast coal mining in Dehing Patkai.

Online protests by students

And now time for my opinion to this. As always I’m against any work which is done at the high cost of nature. I truly support these students. In my view, the Government should have used this opportunity to turn over to renewable energy instead of giving more permissions for mining.

Today we want progress, growth, development and after the covid pandemic there will be a race for these as most of the economies are going down. This will lead to much more excessive use of non-renewable resources and ultimately destroying the nature. This is why the Government should focus on renewable resources.
And the second thing is we want growth, progress and development but at what cost? At the cost of nature? If yes, then this kind of development is of no use.

If you too are against this, social media is always available there. Show your protest on facebook, twitter, etc. and not on the streets. You can also sign an online petition by change.org and show your support to these students. You’ll get it online or on any of the social medias.