Aravali illegal mining: 14 FIRs in 19 months

GURGAON: An RTI response from the district mining office has revealed that 14 FIRs against illegal mining have been lodged in the last 19 months in the city.
According to the response (a copy is with TOI), FIRs have been lodged against individuals, stone crushing firms and drivers of vehicles and dumpers used in mining. While five FIRs have been lodged with Kherki Daula police station, four were filed at Bhondsi police station. Another four were reported at Badshahpur and one in Farrukhnagar. So far, six vehicles have been seized in the city for alleged involvement in illegal mining and each vehicle was fined Rs 2,60,000.

The illegal activity violates the Supreme Court judgment, which suspended all mining operations in the Aravali hills in Haryana, within an approximately 448 sq km area across the districts of Faridabad, Gurgaon and Mewat.

The notification of the ministry of environment and forests on the Aravalis restricted certain activities in specified areas of the hill range, under sections 3(1) and 3(2)(v) of Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, and Rule 5(3)(d) of the Environment (Protection) Rules, 1986, as the activities are known to cause severe environmental degradation in the region.

While the RTI response shows the mining mafia is still active in Gurgaon, activist Aseem Takyar, who had filed the RTI application, said, “I think 14 FIRs in 19 months involves under-reporting. There are many places where the mining mafia is extremely active.“

Highlighting loopholes in the system, another environmentalist said, “There is still a crusher facility in Faridabad.It's thus cheaper to get stones from Gurgaon and get them processed in the neighbouring district. Also, people in Mangar are still using stones to build boundary walls around their farmhouses, so use of stones is still not restricted. The ban on mining can't be implemented if we don't ban the infrastructure that promotes it.“

District mining officer K S Khatkar told TOI, “Our responsibility is to seize vehicles and inform police about illegal activity . It is for police to probe the cases. We have 18 guards and one jeep, which is not enough for vigilance.“