Fayaz Bukhari
Bandipora, Oct 6: In a brazen violation to the Supreme Court (SC) guidelines, a private company in league with the Border Roads Organizations (BRO) project Beacon’s officials and forest department has set up a stone crusher in the dense forests of Bandipora.
The Company is run by the sons of the top politicians of ruling party. The stone crusher has come up adjacent to the forest land leased out to the BRO through a State Cabinet decision in 2009.
Divisional Forest Officer Bandipora, Mohammad Maqbool Rather, dismantled a portion of the stone crusher in July this year but was reportedly asked by the Minister not to pursue with the demolition of the project and allow its functioning.
The stone crusher finally started operation and feeding to the adjacent BRO mixing plant that supplies macadam to Bandipora-Gurez road last month.
The State Cabinet in its decision in year 2009 approved 0.40 hectares of forest land for installation of mixing plant to be used for the macadamization of 82 kilometer Bandipora-Gurez road.
The Cabinet while leasing out the land to the BRO mixing plant had issued clear guidelines that organization should follow the norms and not pollute the fragile environment of the place. Besides this, BRO was asked not to enter into any business with any private party on the leased out land.
The land for mixing plant was leased out to BRO in Tragbal forests in the compartment Number 80-81, around 40 kilometers from Bandipora. The work on the mixing plant was started in 2010 and in 2011 it became operational.
So far the BRO has macadamized around 39 kilometers of the border road. And, meanwhile, it was facing the problem of crushed stones to its plant. The company floated by the sons of top politicians of the ruling party in-connivance with the BRO officials set up the stone crusher adjacent to the BRO leased land.
The stone crusher came up illegally on the forest land without forest clearance while the large number of Central Government funded projects are waiting for forest clearance for past several years in the State.
Only last week, Speaker of the Assembly Mohammad Akbar Lone had directed the State Government to decide about the Forest clearance to the Central Government funded and other developmental projects in the State within two months as opposition parties raised hue and cry over the issue in the Assembly.
The question about forest clearance was raised by the National Panthers Party MLA, Harshdev Singh, in the Assembly. He said that large number of projects are suffering due to lack of forest clearance. The MLA of both the ruling and opposition parties joined Singh and demanded forest clearance for the projects in their respective constituencies.
The apex court of the country has given powers to the Chief Secretary and Forest Secretary who head two empowered committees under the SC guidelines to issue Forest clearance for projects that run through forests.
But in this case the high powered committees were not informed or their clearance was not sought. The project was set up in the shadow of the BRO project to hoodwink the officials. A top BRO official told Excelsior that he has no knowledge of the stone crusher and will look into the matter.
Follow our WhatsApp channel