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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Is Uttarakhand abusing disaster management laws to allow rampant riverbed mining? -Mukta Joshi

Is Uttarakhand abusing disaster management laws to allow rampant riverbed mining? -Mukta Joshi

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published Published on Jun 17, 2021   modified Modified on Jun 26, 2021

-Newslaundry.com

The state’s River Training Policy appears designed to allow near unfettered mining of sand and boulders by private contractors, bypassing green clearance and scientific assessment.

In November 2020, a few months before floods ravaged Uttarakhand, the deputy collector of Purnagiri in Tanakpur district announced an open auction of tenders to desilt the riverbed in Champawat’s villages.

Tenders for government work usually seek the lowest bidder, the contractor willing to do the job at the lowest cost. In this case, however, the highest bidder would get the tender. That is because the tender did not only issue a work contract, as is the usual practice, it also auctioned the right to sell to the construction and building sector all 51,183 tonnes of sand, gravel and boulders estimated to be excavated. It was one of several such tenders floated by district administrations in the hill state since January 31 2020 under the government’s River Training Policy.

The policy lays down a procedure to “train” Uttarakhand’s rivers by excavating silt, gravel and sand from the middle of the riverbeds. Such desilting will direct the flow of the river towards its center and away from the banks, the policy says, and thus “avoid river coast erosion to prevent the loss of lives and infrastructure”.

In other words, the policy allows sand and boulder mining from river beds but without following any safeguards and procedures under mining and environmental laws. That is because the policy asks district administrations to invoke powers under the Disaster Management Act 2005 to auction desilting rights to private contractors. The rights are over specific river stretches and for four-month periods.

The DMA empowers district magistrates to take measures to prevent disasters in their jurisdiction. There is little evidence such desilting reduces disasters, however. Quite the contrary, actually. The clearance database of the environment, forests and climate change ministry, or MoEF, doesn’t show any records for environment and forest clearances for river training works, and no compliance with the sand mining guidelines issued by the environment ministry in 2020.

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Newslaundry.com, 17 June, 2021, https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/06/16/is-uttarakhand-abusing-disaster-management-laws-to-allow-rampant-riverbed-mining?fbclid=IwAR3phBszusVWrUJWQleKH__HrPCO6L9CY_JQFgCZ8xZQ_mLw8yDV5XXTAJI


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