Shillong, Sep 1 (PTI) Transporters in Meghalaya on Wednesday urged Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma to close down all "illegal weighbridges" set up along the national highways within the state. Truckers, exporters, traders and transporters" associations, under the Joint Action Committee, an umbrella organisation, submitted a memorandum to the CM, seeking his intervention to remove these facilities. "We appeal to you to immediately shut down all illegal weighbridges located along NH 6 and NH 40E. We request your kindness not to force us to be part of these illegalities by asking us to pay to these illegal weighbridges as this goes against the law,” the JAC said in the letter. According to the joint committee, the national highways are properties of the Centre and governed by a central act. "Provisions of overloading and its prevention, including penalties etc, are written in the law, especially in the toll highway...Hence any structure built along the highway without the approval of the competent authority which is the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways will deem to be illegal and not permissible in the law," the JAC claimed. Congress MP Vincent H Pala had recently raised the issue in Parliament and demanded an inquiry by the CBI into the "illegal" weighbridges run by the state government on the main national highway. State Transport Minister Sniawbhalang Dhar said, "Weighbridges are not a new thing at all. All these are legal in Meghalaya because these facilities have been notified under a policy of the state government." The state government had, in 2018, notified the Meghalaya Weighbridge Policy in which the transport department has been made the nodal agency for installation, maintenance and setting up of weighbridges across the state. PTI JOP BDC BDC