8 illegal mining cases daily in Haryana

Bhartesh Singh Thakur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 29

As the Haryana Government has proposed in Budget 2020-21 to deploy drones to check illegal mining, close to eight cases of unauthorised mining are being reported everyday in the state. These also include transportation of minerals without valid documents.

According to Economic Survey of Haryana, from 2011-12 to 2019-20 (up to November 30, 2019), 24,632 cases of illegal mining were reported in these 3,164 days, including transportation of mineral without valid documents.

In the past nine years, the maximum cases were reported in 2014-15 when 5,333 incidents came to light.

In the past three years, there were 1,748 cases in 2017-18 which rose to 2,009 in 2018-19. In 2019-20 (till November 30), 619 cases were reported.

A fine of Rs 54.67 crore was realised from 2011-12 to 2019-20 (till November 30) and 1,468 FIRs were registered.

In an earlier data released by the Mining Department, it had come out that acquittals had taken place in nine out of 10 illegal mining cases from 2011-12 to 2018-19.

Even the CAG — in its report tabled on November 26, 2019 — had pointed out that the river flow regime had changed on account of obstruction in river flow by sand miners.

The National Green Tribunal (NGT), vide an order dated April 23, 2019, had directed that along with royalty, price of mineral and penalty, compensation amount equivalent to at least 50 per cent of the showroom value of vehicle found indulging in illegal mining or transportation of illegally mined minerals is required to be recovered before its release.

After the order, from April to December of 2019, 427 vehicles were seized in the state with maximum 149 from Yamunanagar followed by 60 from Sonepat and 55 from Faridabad and Palwal.

In compliance with the Supreme Court orders on illegal mining, the state government has notified the district-level task force under the chairmanship of respective Deputy Commissioner with Superintendent of Police as member in each of the districts.

Further, the action taken by these task forces are reviewed by the state-level task force under the chairmanship of the Chief Secretary.

Apart from checking by the Mines and Geology Department, all other related departments — Forest, Haryana State Pollution Control Board, Transport and Police — are also working to check illegal mining.

There are a total of 119 mines in the state, but only 51 are operational while 52 are either vacant or yet to be allotted.

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