M A I N   N E W S

Plunder in Haryana — I
SC ban leads to reckless mining
Yoginder Gupta
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 30
The ban imposed on mining by the Supreme Court in Gurgaon and Faridabad may have saved the environment in these districts from degradation but it has led to feverish mining activity in the far-flung areas of Haryana and Rajasthan, both legal as well as illegal.

Since these areas escape the judicial eye, mining here is often unregulated, unscientific and indiscriminate, violating the norms laid down by the Supreme Court. Little attention is paid to mandatory provisions to maintain the environment, not to harm the forest land. Anti-pollution laws are more violated than observed.

The heavy demand for construction material (road metal and masonry stone) in Delhi in view of the Metro and the coming Commonwealth Games, has fuelled the avarice of unscrupulous elements, who don’t care two hoots for the environment or legal provisions to ensure scientific mining and labour safety, or even the Explosives Act.

Such elements have been helped by those organs of the state which are supposed to enforce the law. The connivance is not limited to lower functionaries. In certain cases the state government has taken extra pains to bypass the notifications issued by the central government to protect the environment.

On September 14, 2006, the union ministry of environment and forests issued a notification, making it mandatory to have an environment management plan (EMP) for mining on 5 hectares. Recently, the Haryana government auctioned several mining sites in Bhiwani and Mahendragarh districts. To defeat the purpose of September,2006, notification, Haryana kept the size of each mining site below 5 hectares so that no prior environment clearance was required. Care was not taken to ensure that each auctioned site should have at least the right of way.

The 2006 notification also laid down that if the production went up in the existing mining projects, the lease-holder would have to get an EMP approved. Sources in the industry say that in view of the heavy demand from Delhi, coupled with the construction of the express highway around the national capital, the production in the quarries being run in Mewat, Bhiwani, Yamunanagar and Panchkula districts has gone up manifold in the past few months. But the lease-holders suppress their production figures by selling minerals without bills or by resorting to under-billing. This helps them in not only evading taxes but also saves them from the EMP.

Since now the quarries are being auctioned in Haryana on a lumpsum basis, a lease-holder can take out as much quantity of minerals as he wants and does not have to pay the corresponding royalty. Earlier, a lease-holder had to pay royalty by weight or volume on the minerals, giving some control to the mining department, which could also keep a tab on the production figures.

The sources say the mining mafia has found ways to beat the apex court ban on mining in Gurgaon district. Some quantity of minerals is bought from authorised mine operators for which bills are obtained. Under the garb of those bills, a large quantity of stones and other construction material is illegally mined in the Rajasthan areas bordering Haryana and brought to Delhi.

Sources say there are only a couple of legal mining leases in these Rajasthan areas. Again, the mafia obtains bills from these authorised lease-holders and brings illegally mined material to the national capital from Kamah and Pahari in Bharatpur district and places like Sarakala, Sare Khurd, Oshepur and Gandola in Alwar district under the umbrella of these bills. Even in Gurgaon district, despite the Supreme Court holding senior officers personally responsible, who had to file affidavits in the court, the sources say illegal mining is still taking place.