A deadly nexus builds up in sands of our times

Vishav Bharti in Chandigarh

Power Minister Rana Gurjit Singh’s cook Amit Bahadur shocked everybody when he contracted a sand-and-gravel mine in Saidpur Khurd, Nawanshahr, for an annual Rs 26.51 crore. The mine is spread over 11.58 acre and has an annual extractable quantity of 31,320 ton. Going by the amount paid to the government and the material available for digging, he paid Rs 8,464 for each ton of sand and gravel to the government. It doesn’t include local taxes, processing, transportation cost or the contractor’s profit, etc. 

Out in the market, sand and gravel is available for just Rs 500 a ton. When it costs Bahadur 22 times than the market price, then how would he be able to make a profit? Here lies the catch and the story of illegal mining business, dominated by SAD-BJP and Congress workers. 

The common modus operandi of the mining mafia in the state is that they get one site on inflated prices in a bid, but don’t touch the core area. They have the surrounding area excavated or they keep off mining. But, then, they give a free hand to the truckers to do mining and charge a ‘royalty’. It is called ‘Goonda Tax’.

Insiders in the mining department say that even the system of auctioning mines on the basis of extractable material in tons favours the mining mafia. “No one cares how much material a truck carries because the weight is never measured. But if auctions are done on the basis of extractable cubic meter material, it will not give a free hand to contractors,” says a senior functionary of the mining department. 

On May 19-20, Punjab’s department of commerce and industry auctioned 89 sand and gravel quarries, which fetched a record bid of Rs 1,026 crore. But when it came to depositing the 55% of the bidding amount by May 23, almost half of the bidders backed out.

The mafia ‘managers’ put up ‘check posts’ on the outskirts of a mining site and charge money from each truck carrying the mining material. Ropar-based RTI activist and Aam Aadmi Party leader Dinesh Chadha has campaigned against it for several years. “Our efforts helped in creating public awareness, but there is nothing to count on from the government side,” he says. He narrates an incident of March 2014 Nurpur Bedi area, when after mass agitation local police was forced to raid the ‘goonda tax naakas.’ 

The police-politician-mafia nexus is evident from the fact that the Ropar police in an inquiry into a complaint of illegal mining passed an order that it is not their business to investigate the black money. That is why Simarjeet Bains, president of Lok Insaaf Party and MLA from Ludhiana, launched a sand satyagrah. “A new set of mafia has come in. I don’t see anything changing for the better for the people,” he said.