Former Chief Minister and senior BJP leader, Babulal Marandi who visited the incident site of illegal mining in Gopinathpur colliery of Eastern Coalfields Limited in Nirsa on Thursday accused the state government of either being surrounded by coal smugglers or afraid of those operating the illegal mining syndicate.

Marandi who was accompanied by BJP MLAs including, Raj Sinha of Dhanbad and Aparna Sengupata of Nirsa during the site visit while talking media said, “We have informed both the state and central governments time and again about illegal mining syndicates operating in various parts of the state including in Dhanbad leading to the recurrent incidents of mines mishap."

“The current incident in which several persons engaged in coal mining lost their life is a glaring example of loss of precious human life due to ignorance of the ground realities by the state government which, being responsible for maintaining law and order should have acted against the illegal mines operators,” said Marandi.

He further held the state government's failure to create the job opportunities by establishing industries as responsible for the job less youth resorting to risking their life by carrying out illegal mining and said, “As you cross the Nirsa border and reach Bengal you will find plenty of industries operating on both of sides of road spewing steam ensuring employment to the local youth but in sharp contrast there are no industries on our side of border in Dhanbad.”

“The state government's failure can be assumed from the fact that instead of establishing new industries the existing industries have closed down due to the apathetic attitude of the government,” charged Marandi and added that deprived of any source of livelihood the people are compelled to enter deep inside the mines risking their live to eke out their living

Attacking the state government in the wake of illegal mines mishap incidents of Nirsa he said, “The incident which took places at three places including at Gopinathpur, Kapasara and Dahibari C patch indicate the increased scale of mining and charged that instead of acting on the existing illegal mining operations who which he has written to state government of January 14 the fact that remains that all illegal mines which were closed due to tough posture of the previous BJP government of the state have resumed operations."