In what could be termed as a major relief to the people, Central Government has issued notification allowing the State to give environmental clearances for mines up to 25 hectare.
The decision is likely to put a tab on swirling price hike of raw construction materials like sand, grit in the State. Himachal Pradesh has a complete ban on mining of sand, grit and stones by an order of the High Court without prior environment clearances. This had resulted in large scale illegal mining across the State. According to earlier notification of Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), mining for lease area of 5 hectare were required to take mandatory environmental clearances.
The time taking process of clearances from the centre has resulted in very few environmental clearances for the mines in the State and entire raw construction material cost shot up around 10 fold, giving rise to illegal mining in different river beds. The matter was taken up with the Central Government by Industries Minister Mukesh Agnihotri who met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the issue, requesting his intervention. To the relief of the State, now MoEF has issued revised notification on December 24, 2013 allowing the State to give environment clearances to the mines spread up to 25 hectare lease area.
“Under the revised notification, now mines having less than 5 hectare of lease area need not take environment clearance at all, while mines having lease area over 5 hectare and up to 25 hectare, can take environment clearance from State instead of Centre,” said Agnihotri at Shimla. He added that Himachal Pradesh is hilly area and according to the topography very few mines have lease area over 5 hectare. “This notification of centre will help in checking illegal mining and will reduce and stabilise the cost of raw construction materials in the state,” said Agnihotri.
“CM Virbhadra Singh and officials of industry department have taken up the matter persistently with the centre and it could be a major boost to mining sector in the State,” added Agnihotri. According to the data of industry department, 119 units of mining were waiting for environmental clearances from the centre. “Now interested parties of mining will just have to fill a form and seek permissions from the State Government,” he said.
Agnihotri said that industry department has collected compounding fees of around Rs 84.59 crore in past one year from 80 defaulting parties involved in mining including 39 at Kangra district and 24 at Solan district. “In the past one year, total of 5167 cases of illegal mining were detected and in 3,894 cases compounding of machineries have been done with fine around Rs 3.13 crore imposed,” added the minister. He said that maximum of fines were imposed in Una district, which is his home district.
Industry department data suggests that around 300 vehicles involved in illegal mining were compounded by the department including 22 JCB machines. “Now the biggest hurdle of introducing mining policy-2013 has been removed and from Friday, new policy is being notified,” added the Minister.