Meghalaya Assembly resolves to oppose uranium mining

Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma moved the resolution in the 60-member House and said the government was on the same page as communities living in the uranium-bearing areas of the West Khasi Hills district. File | Photo Credit: PTI GUWAHATIThe Meghalaya Assembly on Wednesday (August 26, 2026) adopted a resolution opposing uranium mining and the establishment of any uranium ore-processing facility in the State.Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma moved the resolution in the 60-member House and said the government was on the same page as communities living in the uranium-bearing areas of the West Khasi Hills district.The resolution referred to the Supreme Court’s 2019 order in the State of Meghalaya versus the All Dimasa Students’ Union, which recognised the rights of private and community landowners over both the surface and the minerals beneath their land.“Meghalaya is governed by a distinctive constitutional and customary framework under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which protects community, clan, and individual ownership of land and resources,” Mr. Sangma said.The Assembly resolution was intended to record Meghalaya’s opposition to uranium extraction and processing, the CM said. “We will communicate the decision of the House to the Centre,” he added.The resolution, ahead of the Anti-Uranium Day observed in Meghalaya on October 28, seeks to provide a legislative shield to a decades-old public movement against the exploration of the radioactive mineral.Anti-Uranium Day marks the death anniversary of Spility Lyngdoh Langrin, a matriarch who led the protest against uranium exploration in the Domiasiat, Lostoin, Mawthabah, and Wahkaji areas in the 1990s. She died at 95 in 2020.She became a household name when she rejected a lucrative government offer to buy her land after the Atomic Minerals Directorate undertook exploratory drilling for uranium deposits in 1993. The protests she spearheaded forced the directorate to suspend operations a couple of years later.Langrin led the second phase of the agitation in 2009 after the Meghalaya government granted permission to the Uranium Corporation of India Limited to undertake exploratory activities on 422 hectares in the district.Relentless protests by locals, educated about the effects of uranium mining in Jharkhand’s Jaduguda, made the government revoke the permission in August 2016.Meghalaya has one of the country’s largest reserves of high-grade uranium in South West Khasi Hills. The estimated 9.22 million tonnes of uranium deposits in the State are 16% of the country’s total reserves, and the third highest, after Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh. Published - August 26, 2026 07:34 pm IST