Operational blocks can’t meet addl requirement for NHAI projects
Mechanism yet to be evolved to overcome prevailing crisis
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, June 19: The enormous increase in demand of minor minerals due to several ongoing prestigious projects and inordinate delay in grant of vital clearances for making operational new mining blocks are leading to illegal mining in the Jammu region. However, the Government particularly the Geology and Mining Department has yet not evolved any mechanism to overcome the prevailing crisis.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that the river bed mining is sporadically conducted in the Ramban, Doda and Kishtwar districts because of non occurrences of the flood plains and limited width of the rivers and streams.
Mostly the sand blocks of limited dimension measuring 1-3 hectares are found and only few of them are economically viable and rest are inaccessible to be exploited while as other ones do not conform to the standard procedures employed and general guidelines and the restrictions imposed in the SRO-105, they further said while disclosing that as on date only two sand mining leases have been granted in district Doda and two are operative in Kishtwar district.
Stating that potential of river bed mining has widely been found in the parts of Jammu, Samba, Kathua, Reasi, Udhampur, Rajouri and Poonch districts, they said that due to rapid development strides and upcoming of larger number of constructional projects such as widening of National Highways, Ring Road, Delhi-Katra Expressway, Railway Construction Works, Border Road Organization, PMGSY Road Projects, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and other projects of local importance the demand of minor minerals and other building materials has enormously been increased.
“The difficulty is faced when the timelines with respect to availability of raw material for completion of such important projects do not match with the timely grant of mineral concessions due to time consuming processes of procedures of seeking mandatory Environmental Clearances”, they pointed out, adding “due to this the agencies engaged in developmental projects adopt short cut means for meeting demand of aggregates which results in illegal mining activities”.
According to the sources, in order to understand the gap between demand and supply of minor minerals for local needs and the prestigious projects for overall development of the region an assessment of total mineral potential available in the river /streams beds of the main minor mineral generating districts has been made.
The assessment of the mineral resource has been made by taking into considerations the volumetric method with standard specific gravity factor of 2.0 with 1.0 m depth factor as per recommendations made by the Jammu and Kashmir Environment Impact Assessment Authority (JKEIAA).
As per the assessment a total mineral potential from the Jammu region has been worked out about 296.33 million tons and about 178.0 million tons—-60% area can be taken for removal of minerals from the streams as per Methodology Adopted for Calculating of Mineral Potential cited in Sustainable Sand Mining Guidelines-2016 issued by Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change.
Disclosing that the projected requirement of river bed materials for the completion of mega construction projects of National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) like Delhi-Katra Express is 5 lakh tons, 28 lakh tons and 15 lakh tons from Jammu, Samba and Kathua for the next two years, sources said that the analysis of the data on approved quantity of river bed materials from the present operational blocks does not suffice the additional requirement of about 50 lakh tons for the prestigious NHAI projects.
“Despite being aware of the prevailing situation especially after the recent assessment of potential and requirement of river bed materials, the Government particularly the Geology and Mining Department has not evolved any mechanism to overcome the prevailing crisis”, sources said, adding “in order to ensure that raw material is made available to the project executing agencies without indulging into illegal mining the Government should relax the rules and procedural formalities for making operational additional mining blocks”.
The intensity of the illegal mining can be gauged from the fact that a total of 3021 vehicles carrying 91130 metric tons of minor minerals were seized during the year 2020-21 across Jammu region and fine to the tune of Rs 6.10 crore was realized. “These are the figures of the offences which came to the notice of the Geology and Mining Department and what could be the situation of the offences having gone unnoticed can be easily gauged”, sources said.
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