Nine miners dead in Lalmatia colliery mishap in Jharkhand

December 30, 2016

Godda (Jharkhand), Dec 30: Nine miners were killed and some others feared trapped following a cave-in at Lalmatia opencast coal mine at Rajmahal area of Eastern Coalfields Ltd (ECL) last night.

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"CMD, ECL, has reported that a total of nine bodies of workmen have been recovered from the accident site so far," a Coal Ministry statement said today, adding two injured persons were undergoing treatment.

R R Mishra, officiating CMD of ECL, a Coal India arm,said that the mishap occurred at around 7.30 PM last night when excavators were working there following which rescue operations was launched immediately.

Director General of Mines Safety and senior officials were there to supervise the rescue operation, Mishra said.

The statement said all 10 equipments excavators and dump trucks have been recovered.

An inquiry has been ordered by the Director General of Mines Safety and a high-level committee of experts has been constituted by Coal India to investigate the causes of the accident.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Coal Minister Piyush Goyal, Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das and other leaders expressed grief over the loss of lives.

Das said an assistance of Rs two lakh will be given to the families of the miners who died in the accident while ECL also announced an ex-gratia compensation of Rs five lakh each to these families, in addition to the amount to be paid under the Workmen's Compensation Act.

The PM said Jharkhand Government and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal were "working to restore normalcy".

The National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) was engaged for rescue & relief operations.

"Saddened by the loss of lives at a mine in Jharkhand. My prayers are with those trapped inside. Spoke to CM Raghubar Das on the situation," Modi said on twitter.
Das also announced Rs 25,000 to the injured, official sources said.

"CMD, ECL has reported that an incident of overburden dump slide/subsidence has occurred in the second shift of December 29, at about 7.30 PM in the Rajmahal Open Cast Expansion Project in district Godda, Jharkhand....," the statement said.

Godda is about 250 kms from state capital Ranchi.

All the necessary help to the families of the deceased is being extended by ECL, it said.

"Prima facie, it is observed that the incident is unprecedented, since an area of 300 m length by 110 m wide solid floor of the Over Burden dump area has slid down by about 35 m involving around 9.5 million cubic meters of earth material. This could be due to failure of the bench edge along the hidden fault line/slip," the statement said.

Senior management of ECL and state government officials have been supervising the rescue operations since last evening, it added.

A control room has been set up at the project office of Rajmahal Open Cast Expansion Project of ECL and R R Amitabh, GM, Mining is in-charge of control room.

Goyal said that he was monitoring the rescue operation since last evening with the Chief Minister.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in a tweet "Saddened by the loss of lives in Jharkhand's #Lalmatia coal mine collapse. My prayers for recovery of injured & solace to bereaved families."

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News Network
March 21,2024

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New Delhi, Mar 21: Election Commission (EC) on Thursday directed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of Narendra Modi-led government to put an end to bulk WhatsApp messages labelled 'Viksit Bharat Sampark.' It has also sought a compliance report immediately from the ministry.

EC had received several complaints that such messages are still being delivered on citizens’ phones despite the announcement of Lok Sabha elections and the model code of conduct (MCC) entering into force.

In response, the govt informed the commission that although the letters were sent out before MCC came into force, some of them could have possibly been delivered to recipients with a delay because of systemic and network limitations.

In the past few days, several WhatsApp users have received messages from 'Viksit Bharat Sampark' seeking feedback and suggestions from the public. 

The message comes with a PDF that has a letter from Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioning government schemes like Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, Ayushman Bharat, Matru Vandana Yojana, etc, and seeking suggestions from the citizens over government initiatives and schemes.

The letter which addresses users as 'my dear family members' had sparked political controversy. Congress has called the PDF file attached with the message a ‘political propaganda’.

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News Network
March 27,2024

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The Enforcement Directorate has filed a money laundering case against Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's daughter Veena Vijayan, her IT company and some others to probe a case of alleged illegal payments made by a private mineral firm to her and the company, official sources said Wednesday.

The agency has registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and is expected to summon the people involved, the sources said.

The ED case has been booked after taking cognisance of a complaint filed by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), an investigative arm of the Union corporate affairs ministry, they said.

The case stems from an Income Tax Department investigation that alleged that a private company called Cochin Minerals And Rutile Ltd (CMRL), made an illegal payment of Rs 1.72 crore to Veena's company-- Exalogic Solutions-- during 2018 to 2019, even though the IT firm had not provided any service to the company.

The Karnataka High Court had last month dismissed a plea filed by Exalogic Solutions against the probe initiated by the SFIO.

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News Network
March 21,2024

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New Delhi: India has now become more unequal in terms of wealth concentration than the British colonial period as income and wealth of the top 1% of the country’s population have hit historical highs, according to a paper released by World Inequality Lab.

By 2022-23, the top 1 per cent income share in India was 22.6 per cent and the top 1 per cent wealth share rose to 40.1 per cent, with India’s top 1 per cent income share among the very highest in the world, higher than even South Africa, Brazil and the US.

Co-authored by economists Nitin Kumar Bharti, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, and Anmol Somanchi, the paper stated that the “Billionaire Raj” headed by “India’s modern bourgeoisie” is now more unequal than the British Raj headed by the colonialist forces. 

The paper said there is evidence to suggest the Indian tax system might be “regressive when viewed from the lens of net wealth”. A restructuring of the tax code is needed, the paper said, adding that a levy of a “super tax” of 2 per cent on the net wealth of 167 wealthiest families would yield 0.5 per cent of national income in revenues and create space for investments.

“A restructuring of the tax code to account for both income and wealth, and broad-based public investments in health, education and nutrition are needed to enable the average Indian, and not just the elites, to meaningfully benefit from the ongoing wave of globalisation. Besides serving as a tool to fight inequality, a “super tax” of 2% on the net wealth of the 167 wealthiest families in 2022-23 would yield 0.5% of national income in revenues and create valuable fiscal space to facilitate such investments,” the paper said. 

The paper has analysed data based on the annual tax tabulations published by the Indian income tax authorities to extract the distribution of top income earners between 1922-2020.

The share of national income going to the top 10 per cent fell from 37 per cent in 1951 to 30 per cent by 1982 after which it began steadily rising. From the early 1990s onwards, the top 10 per cent share increased substantially over the next three decades, nearly touching 60 per cent in the most recent years, the paper said. This compares with the bottom 50 per cent getting only 15 per cent of India’s national income in 2022-23.

 The top 1 per cent earn on average Rs 5.3 million, 23 times the average Indian (Rs 0.23 million). Average incomes for the bottom 50 per cent and the middle 40 per cent stood at Rs 71,000 (0.3 times national average) and Rs 1,65,000 (0.7 times national average), respectively.
The richest, nearly 10,000 individuals (of 92 million Indian adults) earn on average Rs 480 million (2,069 times the average Indian). “To get a sense of just how skewed the distribution is, one would have to be at nearly the 90th percentile to earn the average income in India,” the paper said.

In 2022, just the top 0.1 per cent in India earned nearly 10 per cent of the national income, while the top 0.01 per cent earned 4.3 per cent share of the national income and top 0.001 per cent earned 2.1 per cent of the national income.

Enlisting the probable reasons for sharp rise in top 1 per cent income shares, the paper said public and private sector wage growth could have played a part till the late 1990s, adding that there are good reasons to believe capital incomes likely played a role in subsequent years. For the shares of the bottom 50 per cent and middle 40 per cent remaining depressed, the paper said, the primary reason has been the lack of quality broad-based education, focused on the masses and not just the elites.

“One reason to be concerned with such high levels of inequality is that extreme concentration of incomes and wealth is likely to facilitate disproportionate influence on society and government. This is even more so in contexts with weak democratic institutions. After largely being a role model among post-colonial nations in this regard, the integrity of various key institutions in India appears to have been compromised in recent years. This makes the possibility of India’s slide towards plutocracy even more real. If only for this reason, income and wealth inequality in India must be closely tracked and challenged,” it said.

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