Bhopal | Aug 04, 2017: State Mining Corporation is staring at a massive loss due to inordinate delay in granting environmental clearance for mining of sand. Of the 445 sand mines of the corporation, only 203 are operational. No excavation is being done from the remaining 243 for want of environmental clearance (EC).

The corporation had auctioned 445 mines through e-auction this year. But only 203 have received EC. The rest are pending for approval with the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA). The contractors are facing the music. For instance, in Sehore district only 14 per cent of the projected quantity could be excavated in the year 2016-17 and for the current financial year, the figure is less than one per cent.

The corresponding figures for Katni district are 30 per cent and 2.38 per cent respectively and for Khargone, 39 per cent and 6 per cent. In Barwani and Khandwa not a single mine is operational. Overall in MP, the quantity of sand mined was 16 per cent of the projections in last financial year and in current year it is less than 7 per cent.

This has led to a jump in the price of sand. The contractors are adding to the crisis by creating an artificial scarcity of the building material. A truckload of sand is costing between Rs 30,000 and Rs 50,000 presently. MD Manohar Tiwari says the corporation has allotted the mines to the contractors and the contractors have to take EC from SEIAA, which has its own procedures for granting clearance. An SEIAA officer Sachdeva informed that the tenure of SEIAA ended on June 29 this year and the new body would be formed once approval from the state and Central governments was obtained. EC cases would be taken up only after the new body was in place.

It was estimated that in financial year 2016-17, the corporation would earn Rs 1,028.45 crore from auctions of sand mines and pay Rs 391.46 crore as royalty to the state government. But the corporation received just half of the amount and a major part of it was paid to the government as royalty. In the current year the corporation may be in for even greater trouble as sand mining in Narmada has been totally banned.

(Source: http://www.freepressjournal.in/)