Shimla: The forest department’s action of sealing a road used by mining mafia adjoining the Neugal river in Himachal Pradesh has yet again highlighted how the syndicates operate with impunity despite various restrictions and action taken from time to time.
Such roads, at times, make way to news mostly when adverse incidents are reported. Way back in 2014, 24 students from a Hyderabad engineering college were swept away after water was released in the Beas river from the Larji hydro-power project near Thalot in Mandi district. A probe had found that the group of students took a link road constructed to ply tractor-trawlers, to reach the river bed. Subsequently, the Himachal Pradesh government ordered that all such roads were to be sealed.
Illegal mining, especially on the river beds of Sutlej, Beas, Ravi and Swan, among others, has been a political issue for the opposition, be it the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the Congress.
The courts, too, have intervened at various junctures, the latest being the Garni Khad illegal mining in which the High Court of Himachal Pradesh has made state groundwater authority a party in the case.
In 2019, the Jai Ram Thakur-led BJP government planned to use drones to keep a check on illegal mining activities. But nothing concrete came out and now the Congress government led by Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu has made the same assurance.
But, things on the ground seemingly remain the same. Local residents at Thural in Kangra district claim that the mining mafia will soon rebuild a road like the one sealed last week, and it will be back to square one.
Most cases of illegal mining are reported from the border industrial belt of Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh (BBN) adjacent to Punjab’s Rupnagar district, and the river beds in districts such as Kangra, Una and Hamirpur.
Kaccha roads like the one adjoining the Neugal river are constructed by the mining mafia, a DIG rank police officer conceded. “The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has banned riverbed mining. So there is no officially leased out mining site at any river bed. These are illegal roads.”
“This is a failure of the state machinery. These roads have not come up overnight. Hundreds of people, including those responsible for checking illegal mining, environmental degradation, have seen them coming,” the officer told ThePrint.
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‘These roads are not invisible’
Jagtar Singh, a resident of Nurpur from Kangra district, said rivers and khads (tributaries) are a rich source of sand and gravel.
“Illegal miners construct a kaccha road to the riverbed so that their machinery can reach there. One can see JCBs or poclain machines digging up rivers or tributaries where the (water) depth is low,” he said.
The demand for sand and gravel is high, especially in neighbouring Punjab, Singh said. “Illegal miners focus more on areas bordering Punjab, where there are chances of escaping from the state police.”
Another Nurpur resident, Randhir Singh Pathania, claimed the illegal mining syndicates are more organised than the machinery responsible to curb it. “Government is hit by a staff crunch, lack of coordination between departments,” he said, adding that illegal mining mostly takes place in forest-or revenue-department owned land.
“Neither department has the dedicated staff to curb it. There is a need for dedicated teams made up of officials from all departments concerned. If the mining mafia is working in an organised way, there have to be organised efforts to contain it,” he told ThePrint.
As of now, officials are taking action as per their convenience, which has its drawbacks, said locals. For example, when forest officials take action, miners claim that the land belongs to their owners. Any action then has to be followed up with the revenue department.
Pathania blamed mining in the Chakki khad as the cause of the damage that led to the collapse of a British era railway bridge in August last year.
“While travelling riverside, excavation machinery and trucks in the riverbed is a regular sight at various places. These roads are not invisible, nor are the machines used to construct them. Local police, revenue, and forest officials should know about these link roads. If they don’t, it is a failure of the system,” said Jagat Ram, a resident of Baddi in Solan district.
Magnitude of illegal mining
Himachal Pradesh reported 8,965 cases of illegal mining in 2022-23, with Mandi district topping the list at 1,850 followed by Kangra 1,282, according to the industry department.
Additionally, 6,978 of the nearly 9,000 cases were compounded — resolved by the parties coming to an agreement — that led to the deposit of Rs 4.88 crore to the exchequer.
While 1,080 cases were lodged in the court, 490 were decided with fines to the tune of Rs. 66 lakh imposed on the violators.
Rakesh Kumar Prajapati, director, industries, Himachal Pradesh, told ThePrint that the state was divided into four mining zones to enforce mining laws and to monitor illegal mining.
“Each zone is headed by a state-level geologist,” he told ThePrint, adding that the mining department detected 3,382 illegal mining cases from April 2022 to February 2023.
Zone 1 comprises Shimla, Chamba and Kinnaur district; Zone 2 has Una, Kangra and Hamirpur; Zone 3 Sirmaur, Solan and Bilaspur; and Zone 4 has Mandi, Kullu, Lahaul and Spiti.
Raids, challans, cases are among the steps taken by the administration against those involved in these illegal activities.
“Every year, several cases of illegal mining are detected, and FIRs filed besides challaning and seizing of vehicles. But all this has not deterred the illegal mining mafia,” a senior forest official admitted.
“There have been cases where we cancel the permit of a (stone) crusher and book the owner for illegal mining but permission is taken on a relative’s name and the activity continues,” he said, explaining how rules are bypassed by mining operators.
High demand for riverbed materials
Apart from China on east, Himachal Pradesh is bordered by Jammu & Kashmir, and Ladakh on north, Punjab on West and South-West, Haryana on South, and Uttarakhand on South-East.
“Una district, which borders Punjab, is infamous for illegal mining. Punjab has high demand for construction material and a lot of illegal mining activities are carried out at areas near Punjab border. The situation was so worrying that a task force under a DSP rank officer was formed and stationed especially to check illegal mining,” an SP rank police officer told ThePrint.
A district-level official of the industry department said Punjab has come up with a new mining policy under which tax is charged on the basis of per cubic metre of mined riverbed materials from the hill state. In contrast, he said, the Himachal Pradesh government issues M-form (certificate) to authenticate that material is legally mined.
Himachal Industry Minister Harshvardhan Singh Chauhan said levying tax without M-form is equal to legalising illegal mining. “I will take up this issue with Punjab. We are cracking down on the mining mafia. If Punjab cooperates, things will be better,” he told ThePrint.
Border areas allow people involved in illegal mining to escape to the neighbouring state when police carry out raids, a resident of Bathri village in Himachal’s Una district said. “There are some locations where the border is not properly demarcated.”
Una district was in the news in 2021 when the NGT had pulled up authorities for illegal mining in the Swan river. This was after a local resident drew the tribunal’s attention to the danger posed by illegal mining to the Rs 922-crore Swan channelisation project in the district.
Another issue often highlighted is illegal mining being carried out on plots adjacent to land leased out by the government for mining due to absence of land demarcation.
“Illegal miners use machines instead of manual excavation and mining has been carried out on my land,” said Karan Singh, an ex-serviceman from Bassa village in Kangra. “This is adjacent to Gajj Khad Jawali in Kangra district. I have been urging the government to demarcate my land and the leased out land, but no action has been taken so far.”
JCB machines can be seen at Gajj Khad. “All this is occurring near a railway bridge, a road bridge and on wetland,” he added.
Another resident of the same area alleged a nexus between illegal miners and mining officials. “Whenever we complain about illegal mining to the mining department, activities are stopped only for a few days,” he said.
Himachal Pradesh Director General of Police (DGP) Sanjay Kundu said the law enforcing department has never gone soft on the mining mafia.
“Police have so far issued more than 750 challans and registered one criminal case (between 1 January and 31 March, 2023). Efforts are on to check illegal mining. Recently, the forest department took some action against illegal mining in Palampur, assisted by local police,” he told ThePrint.
The DIG rank police officer mentioned above rued that people involved in illegal mining are booked under the charge of theft — which has a maximum punishment of three years, or a fine, or both — under IPC (Section 379).
“Provisions of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act are currently non-cognizable. Offences under the Act should be made cognizable,” the officer said, highlighting that offences under the Act are compounded by collecting fines.
Another suggestion put forth by the officer is doing away with private land holdings in mining areas. All these river beds must be designated as government land, he added.
Kangra-based environmentalist Shamsher Singh emphasised that illegal mining is a major source of construction material in and outside Himachal Pradesh. “Going tough on them will create a shortage of construction material in the state. To deal with this situation, the state machinery goes soft on them. But they are causing huge damage to the ecology,” he told ThePrint.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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