-The Telegraph The Telegraph reports on a riverine community’s determination to save its environs Once upon a time, when my forefathers were looking for land to settle down, they found this barren sandbar and decided to make it a habitable place,” says Nani Roy, 42, a resident of Manachar. Char is the Bengali word for sandbar. Manachar is the sandbar that extends from Durgapur Barrage to Panagarh in Burdwan district. About three...

-The Tribune SDO fears damage to bundhs & stone studs may flood residential areas, agri land Yamunanagar: Despite efforts of the district authorities to stop illegal mining, the activity is going on unabated in the Pathrala rivulet in Jaitpur and Nagli villages, close to bundhs and stone studs built by the Irrigation Department to protect residential areas and agricultural land. On the complaint of Vinod Kumar, Sub Divisional Officer (SDO), Water Services Division,...

-TheThirdPole.net The plight of a small Himalayan river is echoed all over Asia, as communities lose lives and property to the ‘unscientific and unsustainable’ mining of riverbeds It was around 5 AM on 19 October 2021, dark, drizzling and cold in the foothills of the Himalayas. “A noise woke up my wife,” says farmer Gopal Datt Sharma in Indirapuri village, near the city of Haldwani in Uttarakhand, northern India. She went out...

-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...

-TheThirdPole.net Going against its own orders, the government in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has ordered the fast-tracking of environmental clearances despite manifest evidence of illegal sand mining A few months after the Jammu and Kashmir government auctioned hundreds of stretches of riverbeds for mineral extraction, companies that won the bids are mining the riverbeds despite the lack of environmental clearance. This makes the mining illegal. But instead of...