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The demand for minerals, boulders and sand is so nice that it has fueled a black market and the goons who management this commerce don’t hesitate to kill regulation enforcement officers and reporters who’ve tried to reveal them.
Rashme Sehgal studies.
The Uttar Pradesh police have acquired a status for being set off blissful. After the current incident in Bharatpur village in Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand, the place a UP police group reportedly shot an area BJP chief’s spouse, the police from each states — UP and Uttarkhand — have hurled accusations at one another.
The UP police reportedly suspected that Zafar Ali, a member of the sand mafia, was hiding within the BJP chief’s home, which led to the shootout.
This case as soon as once more highlights simply how tenacious the hyperlinks are between the sand mining mafia and politicians.
Each river within the nation is below siege. The sand mining mafia blatantly use big vans to excavate sand from the river banks and carry it to dumping websites situated in our cities.
Udham Singh Nagar is not any exception. Situated on the foothills of the Himalayas, it’s strewn with rivers and rivulets which give a prepared supply of fabric for the sand mining mafia.
The sand mining mafia, extra emboldened within the final decade, doesn’t hesitate to homicide cops, Indian Forest Service officers and native authorities functionaries who attempt to forestall their operations.
In August, Deputy Superintendent of Police Surender Singh Bishnoi was mowed down by a dumper truck throughout a raid he was conducting to verify unlawful mining in Haryana’s Nuh district.
Whereas the Haryana police claims to have arrested the driving force of the dumper truck, a senior Haryana police officer says on situation of anonymity, “We all know who’s heading these operations in our state, however our arms are tied.”
After the sale of liquor, the quickest approach for politicians to earn a quick buck is from the sale of minerals, boulders and sand.
All three are extremely profitable commodities required to feed the actual property and infrastructure industries.
The demand for minerals, boulders and sand is so nice that it has fueled a black market and the goons who management this commerce don’t hesitate to kill regulation enforcement officers and reporters who’ve tried to reveal them.
In accordance with knowledge collected by the South Asia Community on Dams, Rivers and Individuals, 418 folks misplaced their lives and one other 434 sustained accidents in sand mining associated violence and accidents between December 2020 and March 2022.
In March this yr, a Haryana street transport official and a truck driver had been burnt to dying for having dared to reveal giant scale unlawful mining on the banks of the Yamuna.
UP has the worst document amongst all our states having witnessed 102 deaths and 90 accidents in instances of sand mining operations based on knowledge accessed by the South Asia Community on Dams, Rivers and Individuals group.
The mafia focused a police group in Agra in 2021 burning their automobiles and a police verify submit following the unintended dying of a sand tractor driver.
IMAGE: A ferry transporting sand within the Ganga regardless of the Bihar authorities’s ban on sand mining. {Photograph}: ANI Photograph
Bihar has seen 20 violent assaults by the sand mafia, injuring 48 policemen, within the final 18 months. Fearing their clout, many police officers favor to show a blind eye to their operations.
Morena in Madhya Pradesh witnessed a vicious assault when Shradha Pandre, a daring lady sub divisional forest officer, was attacked by 100 males sporting masks carrying stones and sticks.
Pandre was attacked as a result of she seized a tractor carrying sand. This incident occurred in 2021. Thankfully, Pandre managed to outlive the assault.
The Chambal river space, near the place Pandre was attacked, is a scorching mattress of the sand mafia who function with impunity.
By the way, the Madhya Pradesh authorities not too long ago got here up with an uncommon proposal of denotifying 29,239 hectares within the Chambal wildlife sanctuary to make it out there for ‘authorized’ sand mining.
Males carrying assault rifles guard sand mining operations alongside the Narmada river. The Narmada river space is dotted with earth movers and JCB machines eradicating sand and driving it into bigger cities.
IMAGE: Unlawful sand mining on a river financial institution. {Photograph}: PTI Photograph
Sand mining constitutes just one mineral loss working into a number of thousand crore rupees yearly.
India presently produces 95 completely different minerals and the mining business in India is value about Rs 3 lakh crore.
In 2020-2021, it was value Rs 294,644 crore.
Though sand mining is just one amongst a number of minerals being mined within the nation, the issue with its mining is that it impacts water safety.
Manoj Mishra, an activist who has spent many years combating to avoid wasting the Yamuna, noticed, “Mining and sand mining particularly are a part of the political economic system. These operations are run by native politicians. It permits for low funding at very low danger, however provides again very excessive income. So everybody has made a beeline for it.”
In accordance with a Union setting ministry report, 416,000 incidents of unlawful mining had been reported between 2013 and 2017.
In accordance with this report, there are 100,000 incidents of unlawful mining found within the nation every year. When the numbers of unlawful mining occurences are additional damaged down, it really works out to eight,833 incidents each month; 294 incidents on daily basis; 12 incidents each hour.
Most of those unlawful mining instances by no means attain the court docket or the police.
In 2016, 107,609 instances of unlawful mining had been reported. Of those, FIRs had been registered solely in 6,033 instances.
Rampant sand mining has lowered the river mattress of most of our rivers, affecting their movement. Large craters have been created which might contaminate river acquifers as has occurred with the Yamuna and Hindon rivers in Noida and Larger Noida.
In the end, our rivers are affected and this may affect India’s water safety.
Function Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com
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