Lawyers engaged by various defendants to attend the hearing on the National Green Tribunal ban on rat-hole mining have made it the costliest hearing in terms of fees paid to them, says a report in The Shillong Times.

This may be the first of its kind in Meghalaya in terms of more than 35 defendants coming together along with their lawyers to deal with a single case.

While many sittings were held in Shillong, a few took place in Delhi.

“I have paid my lawyer Rs 200,000 for a single sitting in the NGT case,” Independent legislator Justine Dkhar said, explaining the difficulty in arranging lawyers to defend the case.

A state government official said that the Meghalaya government had already spent several lakhs of rupees for assigning lawyers for the case.

The fee for a single sitting charged by senior advocate Pinaki Misra from Delhi and engaged by the government is Rs 700,000. He attended four sittings. If the hearing is held in Delhi, the amount is Rs 3.5 lakh and the same amount is charged when the hearing takes place in Shillong.

The fee charged by Delhi-based advocate Ranjan Mukherjee, the government counsel, is Rs 30,000 per sitting.

In April last year, the NGT, in an interim order, banned coal mining. The next hearing is fixed for 16 April.

A visit to ponder on

It&’s not every day that a chief minister is left squirming in his chair by the guest who he personally invites, writes Tongm Rina in the Itanagar-based Arunachal Times.

The tormentor was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who thundered, “Pai pai ka hisaab dena hoga” at IG Park while addressing a crowd on the occasion of the 29th statehood day celebrations, sending a clear message to politicians, bureaucrats, technocrats and contractors to behave themselves and not misuse public money. Modi did not announce any financial package, but given that most of the projects worth Rs 10,000 crore announced by UPA Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2008 are yet to take shape, the Centre&’s reluctance to part with more is understandable.

Other than the civil secretariat building, railway connectivity and bits and pieces progress in TransArunachal Highways, Itanagar water supply scheme, most of the 20-point projects are yet to take off. Modi did not respond to the chief minister&’s 15-point demand that included continued support for the special Central package.

The days of easy money and lavish spending in the state are gone. But it is rather worrying that the Centre should be so high-handed with poor and unproductive Arunachal. Given the fact that the government will not be able to salvage itself from financial misery nor submit the much-touted and needed utilisation certificates, the hard days have just started. But if the Centre is pushing for a change in political set-up, while depriving the Congress government of any financial assistance, that would be rather unfair.

The Prime Minister took a complete U-turn on the tapping of hydro power potential in the state. He told Arunachalese to exploit hydro potential like Bhutan and Nepal had done. One was left wondering whether he was the same person who. before the general election last year, said the locals should decide for themselves when it comes to hydro power development.