BHUBANESWAR:Rivers on the outskirts of Capital City have become home to indiscriminate, illegal and unscientific sand mining. While over 100 lorry loads of sand are mined and transported on daily basis, the administration has turned a blind eye to the issue.
Sand mining is rampant in the area in gross violation of the guidelines. It has affected cultivable land adjacent to river as the groundwater level has depleted drastically.
Admitting to the shortcomings in the existing mechanism to check illegal mining of sand, Khurda Collector Niranjan Sahoo said enforcement drives are neither enough to contain the menace or act as a deterrent for neophytes of this trade.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior official of Revenue Department said though the Department has engaged special squads at tehsil level to check the activities, an unholy nexus between officials and sand mafia acts as a shield for the latter.
While calling for steps to keep the criminals on a tight leash, Sahoo sought a vigilant role of the Commissionerate Police and Motor Vehicles Department (MVD). “They can play a more proactive role especially during night by tightening the noose on old run-down vehicles used in these operations,” he added.
Though the area under Kuakhai bridge on outskirts of the city is known to be most notorious for this activity, tehsil officials could not quantify the exact amount of sand being mined from the location.
As per the latest Supreme Court guidelines, sand mining on river bed from an area over five hectares requires environment clearance. “For low-scale mining operations, we issue permits to miners if they produce a valid State or Central Government work order,” Balianta Tehsildar Sweta Kumar Dash said.
It is rarely verified whether the miners authorised by district administration do the mining by themselves or sub-lease the operations to another contractor. Besides, pollution control norms are blatantly violated by several miners who use old, rickety excavators and trucks for extraction and transportation of sand, said the sources.
Besides, the trucks while plying on NH-5 scatter a muddy mixture of sand, clay and water on the highway thereby posing serious threats to the lives of commuters especially two-wheeler riders. With the district administration turning a blind eye to the wide-scale exploitation of river bed, serious ecological imbalances have arisen in the nearby villages.
When contacted, the Mancheswar police feigned ignorance about the practice.
