Monitoring plan against illegal mining ready, High Court told

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 28

The Punjab Government has come out with a monitoring plan for preventing illegal mining and illicit excavation of minor minerals in the state. The detailed plan is yet to be approved by the Cabinet.

Information to this effect was furnished before a Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court as a case hovering around illegal mining in the state came up for resumed hearing.

Appearing before the Bench of Justice Satish Kumar Mittal and Justice Mahavir Singh Chauhan, counsel for the respondent-State submitted that the state government had prepared the monitoring prevention plan and soon a decision on the same would be taken. “Thereafter, the plan will be notified”.

He said action would be taken against persons indulging in illegal mining in the state in accordance with the plan. For the time being, a special investigation team was continuing with the assigned task of preventing illegal mining and “taking action in this regard”.

Taking a note of the assertion, the Bench fixed October 21 as the next date of hearing. The state government has already registered no less than 2,000 FIRs in cases hovering around illegal mining.

The high court, at one point of time, had expressed displeasure with the probe carried out by the special investigating team into illegal mining in Punjab.

It had virtually questioned the SIT on its intention to expose people behind the illegal mining mafia. The high court had also questioned the Punjab Government on the delay in filing the reply in the matter.

The high court had observed in the open court that the SIT had failed to reach at any conclusion in the matter of illegal mining.

The high court had also rapped the Punjab Police on its knuckles for failure to act against those involved in the illegal mining in the state. It had further expressed its dissatisfaction over the SIT report.

Stating that nothing significant was there in the report, the high court had asserted: “The SIT report does not highlight the names of the persons such as bureaucrats, politicians and police officers indulging in the menace”. The Bench had further sought the details of FIRs registered against the particular persons.

The developments took place during the resumed hearing of a public interest litigation seeking directions to the Punjab Government and the Centre to put on auction mining areas with environmental clearance in a transparent and time-bound manner to curb illegal mining in the state.