NASHIK | Jan 09, 2015: The district mining office has identified only 17 blocks as against last year's 46 for e-auction in 2015 with a revenue target of Rs 33.27 crore. In 2014, the administration had been able to fetch for only eight sites that earned Rs 3.03 crore.

The office has decided to put 17 blocks under the hammer for e-auction on January 23. Opening up of major sand mining opportunities in neighbouring districts and the rise in prices of mining contract in Nashik district are some of the reasons that bidders find the Nashik market "quite hot".

District mining officer M P Barhanpurkar said, "The number of ghats offered for the auctioning process has been dwindling. The administration had proposed 65 ghats in 2012-13, of which only 10 found bidders. In 2013-14, 46 ghats were slotted for the auction process. But only eights ghats found bidders. Considering the ground reality, this time only the possible major ghats have been selected and listed."

The maximum number of ghats is in the Malegaon taluka, where six ghats have been notified for sand mining. The total volume of sand available in the taluka is 65,972 brasses and the administration has put up the same under the hammer. The administration expects to garner above Rs 22.21 crore from the taluka alone.

Last year, one of the ghats from Malegaon was put up for auction at the off-set price of Rs 47 lakh. The site, however, fetched Rs 1.61 crore and the administration therefore hopes that the existing ghats in the taluka would also give good returns, the officer said.

Kalwan taluka has two sites with the volume of 24,099 brasses at Rs 3.06 crore and Deola taluka has 16,113 brasses of sand at its only site and that is expected to garner Rs 2.78 crore for the administration.

The administration has also taken IT help to curb the menace of illegal transportation of sand. "The contractor has to pay one-time royalty of sand that would be excavated after which Mahaonline software would generate bill system for the contractor. Every time the truck left the site with certain quantity of sand, the royalty of the said volume of sand would be deducted from the pool and sticker generated would define the volume of sand the distance and the destination the truck would be travelling. If the truck was found on other route, the truck would be penalised," the officer said.

(Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/)