Ranchi, Jan. 28: The Raghubar Das government has started tightening its grip on illegal mining, empowering village mukhiyas to conduct auctions of sand pits and making it mandatory for agencies to seek all clearances, thereby setting in motion a transparent mechanism that does not promote corruption.

The directive issued by mines secretary Arun, which overturns a controversial auctioning procedure introduced by the former government of Hemant Soren, means that from now on auction of sand ghats across the state would be held under gram panchayat boards headed by respective mukhiyas, while it would be mandatory for agencies to take environmental clearances and have their mining plans approved before the start of operations on the ground. 

“The mines secretary has issued directives to undertake the auction process by the respective gram panchayat boards on the matter of sand mining. Earlier, the powers were with deputy commissioners. But, now we would only act as facilitator of the auction process. No sand mining will take place without a mandatory environmental clearance and mining plan approval,” West Singhbhum deputy commissioner Aboo Backer Siddique told The Telegraph from Chaibasa where a review meeting was held today. 

Among the others who were at Chaibasa — the headquarters of Kolhan commissionary covering districts of West and East Singhbhums and Seraikela-Kharsawan —  were deputy commissioner of East Singhbhum Amitabh Kaushal, his Seraikela-Kharsawan counterpart Chandra Shekhar and senior government officials. 

Today, Arun and his team members went around Kiriburu and adjoining areas of iron ore rich West Singhbhum, which shares borders with Odisha.  

Later, a deputy commissioner said that the state government should also fix a per cubic feet rate of sand, besides putting in place regulations on maximum per day/per month/per year output from sand ghats to ensure regulated mining of natural resources.

Yesterday, the district administrations of Ranchi and Khunti cracked down on illegal mining of sand. While Ranchi deputy commissioner Vinay Kumar Choubey issued orders to stop mining at four sand ghats in the district, his Khunti counterpart stopped operations at 11 river ghats.

Sources in the state mines & geology department admitted that indiscriminate mining was carried out in majority of sand ghats without mandatory environmental clearances. 

The decision to auction sand rights was taken by the former Hemant Soren government with Opposition parties alleging “illegitimate deals” between private firms, many of them from Mumbai, and members of the Soren family.

As many as 150 sand ghats of 12 districts were auctioned by the Hemant government.

Before this, mining rights were vested with respective gram panchayats.

Today’s order by the mining secretary is in tandem with the avowed promise of the new BJP-led government of Raghubar Das to keep tabs on illegal mining activities, be it sand — in demand by the construction industry — or more precious iron ore, coal and other minerals.