Shillong, Nov 6: The Shillong Ropeway Project has now become a standoff of two refusals. The government says it cannot scrap or shift the project. The protesters say they will not allow it to touch Lum Shyllong.
That standoff was on display at Barik on Friday, where the Joint Action Committee Against Shillong Ropeway Project held a sit-in in front of the Kiang Nangbah statue, a day after the government underlined that the lease agreement signed four years ago binds the project to its present site, and that the alignment is 3.15 km away from water sources.
JAC member Venitia Mawlong framed the sit-in not as a fresh start, but as a public reminder that the agitation had been alive from the first day.
“We as the JAC have come out to the streets and this is not the beginning but it is to show the public that the JAC has not rested since the first day,” she said.
Her sharpest words were reserved for Tourism Minister Paul Lyngdoh. Mawlong said his comment that there was no need to cry betrayed a lack of understanding of what mothers in the area were living through, and amounted to a personal attack.
“I want to make it clear especially to the Tourism Minister Bah Paul Lyngdoh who is a person with 12 powers, how can he say that there is no need to cry, to weep, does he understand what we mothers individually are going through, he should not personally attack us,” she said.
She invoked Lyngdoh’s past as KSU president, a time when she said he was trusted to gather Khasi children together in a small community, and asked why that same leader now stood against them.
“Why now does he oppose us, he threatens us through those dirty tactics of his,” Mawlong said. “Please do not threaten us the public, do not threaten, do not intimidate with your dirty tactics, please keep your dirty tactics in your house.”
Even though Lyngdoh is abroad, Mawlong said the message had to reach him: the JAC was not resting.
On the legal route, Mawlong was clear that the JAC would not move the High Court for a stay at this stage. A court case, she argued, would transfer the fight from the people to lawyers on both sides and bring the street agitation to an end.
“We will fight ourselves as much as we can,” she said.
On water sources, Mawlong said it pained her to see a man who once loved his community now, in her words, using the chair to threaten.
“If Bah Paul was not in the chair now, he would be with us now because he was a person who loved his community at one time but now he is in a position, he is in the chair, the chair now perhaps has become even stronger so he threatens, not only us, the people of Raid Laban but he has threatened the city of Shillong and the whole State,” she said.
She also questioned the claim that outsiders knew Lum Shyllong better than its own people.
“Do you think a person from outside knows the water sources for drinking, I do not think so and Bah Paul also should study, please do your homework, no more about Lum Shyllong,” she said.
“We stand firm and the end is just this, do not touch Lum Shillong at all and we will not allow you to touch Lum Shyllong,” she said.
Greentech Foundation chairman H Bansiewdor Nonglang, who also addressed the gathering, said the protest after four to five months of standing on the issue was about telling the public truths that the government had not told.
“We want to inform the public to also know the truths, until now the Government has not told you the truths,” Nonglang said.
He said the public debate had focused on 544 felled trees, and the pain over those trees was real. But the documents, he claimed, showed what was coming at the terminals.
“Do you know, at the lower terminal what those buildings mean, at the upper terminal what those buildings mean, do you know there will come Restaurants, Food courts, I am not just speaking words, here in writing it is all there,” he said.
For Nonglang, that pointed to a larger danger: privatisation, commercialisation and exploitation of Lum Shyllong.
“If we lose it once, do not talk about Lum Shyllong anymore from now onwards,” he said.
Nonglang said the foundation had acted as elders, with caution and after thinking twice, even while being countered by the government. Its involvement, he said, began when mothers from Laban and Lawsohtun came to the GTF office in May, June and July 2026, worried that trees were being felled.
“I said we will see, we will dig deep and we will think and when we went we found that there was indeed felling of trees,” he said.
“When mothers seek help, how can we refuse,” he said. “If we have to agitate for the drinking water sources, we will agitate.”
