Jaipur | July 25, 2017: Rajasthan is mining its natural wealth away without chipping a penny to restore its mine spoils or trying to strike an environmental balance.
Ministry of mines, GOI lists Rajasthan as the state with the largest area 19,630.03 ha under mining operation, leading with 3,511 leases and 109 prospecting licenses in the country. But not a penny has been spent out of over Rs 287 crore, the state collected from mining operations as 'Environment Management Fund' in the last five years.
According to data available with the TOI through RTI filed by Babu Lal Jaju, since 2012, the Rajasthan government started collecting the 'Environment Management Fund', EMF at the behest of the Supreme Court. And till 2017 when this fund was discontinued and District Mineral Foundation Trust was formed not a penny has been spent by the government on environment improvement.
"Why does the government take this fund at all if it does not do anything to minimize the adverse impacts of mining in the state? This fund was not meant for the government to make a fixed deposit and sit on the interest generated. The highest revenue that the government earned from EMF was in 2013-14 that was Rs 120.8 crore," said Babu Lal Jaju. But ironically while in the subsequent year mining increased in the state the revenue generated decreased, he said.
During 2014-15, the state wise break up of number of leases as reflected by ministry of mines in January 2017, indicates that Rajasthan was leading with 3,511 leases followed by Andhra Pradesh (1,484), Gujarat (1,078), Madhya Pradesh (1,018), Tamil Nadu (935), Karnataka (546), Odisha (526), Telangana (486), Chhattisgarh (299), Jharkhand (271), Maharashtra (260) and Haryana (107). These twelve states together accounted for about 95.64% of the total mining leases in force in the country.
According to the year and district wise data of the EMF, in the year 14-15 Jaipur district contributed highest revenue to the state exchequer of Rs 11.99 cr from barely Rs 1.97 cr in 2012-13. But the same came down to 4.17 in the following year. Moreover the state's revenue in 2014-15 financial year when the state had the highest number of mining leases the revenue came down to Rs 119 cr.
However officials in the mining department said, "Yes the fund collected since 2012 has not been used at all. But it is now lying with the finance department till government decides how to put that to use for the environment."
Of the total mining lease area covered by different states, Rajasthan accounted for 20.51% followed by Odisha (16.49%), Karnataka (10.50%), Madhya Pradesh (7.67%), Andhra Pradesh (9.23%), Gujarat (6.28%), Jharkhand (5.96%) Chhattisgarh(5.22%), Telangana (4.96%), Maharashtra (3.41%), Haryana (2.40%) and Tamil Nadu(2.24%). These twelve states accounted for about 94.87% of the total mining lease area granted and the remaining 5.13% was accounted for by the rest of the eleven states.
(Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/)