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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How will India address illegal sand mining without any data? -Ishan Kukreti

How will India address illegal sand mining without any data? -Ishan Kukreti

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published Published on Oct 16, 2017   modified Modified on Oct 16, 2017
-Down to Earth

New laws to regulate sand mining have not had much impact

Illegal sand mining is a perennial problem in India. But it assumes gargantuan proportions right before the onset of monsoon because swollen rivers make extraction extremely difficult during the rainy season. To make most of the lean period, mine owners and hoarders try to dig out as much sand as possible, through legal and illegal means, in the pre-monsoon months.

This happened this year too, and was evident from the surge in cases reported in the media. In May, the newly elected Congress government in Punjab found itself in the middle of a multi-crore rupee sand mining scam. Punjab’s power and irrigation minister, Rana Gurjit Singh, was alleged to have granted mining leases to his acquaintances, including his former cook, Amit Bahadur.

In another case, reported from Uttar Pradesh in June, Nishank Tripathi, son of sitting Bharatiya Janata Party legislator Subhash Tripathi of Payagpur constituency in Bahraich, was accused of burying two children alive while illegally mining sand.

There are no official figures for the amount of sand mined illegally. But in 2015-16, there were over 19,000 cases of illegal mining of minor minerals, which include sand, in the country, said Piyush Goyal, former minister of mines, while answering a question in the Lok Sabha in February (see ‘Countrywide malaise’ on p18). How many of these cases were related to sand mining is not recorded, but sand is the fourth most mined minor mineral, says the Indian Bureau of Mines.

Under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957, mining of minor minerals is regulated by the states. In 2012, hearing a public interest petition filed by Haryana-based advocate Deepak Kumar, the Supreme Court acknowledged the dangers of small-scale sand mining (spread over less than 5 hectares), which leads to extensive and unsustainable removal of sand from river banks. Drawing from the order, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), issued Sustainable Sand Mining Management Guidelines in March 2016. Same year, in May, it amended the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification 2006 to make environmental impact clearance mandatory for small-scale sand mines. The notification also called for treating cluster mines (those within 500 m of each other) as a single mine and provided for the creation of two bodies—a District-level Expert Appraisal Committee (DEAC) to assess the environmental impact of mines and a District Environment Impact Assessment Authority (DEIAA), under the district collector, to prepare a District Survey Report for tabulating sand mining potential of the district and for granting clearances.

“Though it has been more than a year since the amendment was made, and most states have constituted the district-level bodies, nobody cares about illegal mining of sand and the norms are openly flouted,” says Biren Nayak, programme manager of ActionAid, an international non-profit that works on issues related to poverty and social justice.

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Down to Earth, 30 September, 2017, http://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/flouted-with-impunity-58736


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