HC gives state 6 months to check illegal mining
The court passed the order on a Rupnagar man’s plea who alleged that illegal royalty was being collected from trucks carrying sand and gravel
GOVT ASKED TO APPRISE THE COURT BY AUGUST ABOUT ITS PROPOSAL TO BRING IN AMENDMENTS IN THE MINING REGULATION LAW
CHANDIGARH : The Punjab and Haryana high court has given six months to the Punjab government to put in place a robust mechanism to stop illegal mining and deal with complaints related to it.
The high court bench of justices Jaswant Singh and Ashok Kumar Verma passed the order on February 26 (made available now) on a plea of Bachittar Singh of Rupnagar, who had alleged that royalty was being collected from trucks carrying gravel and had demanded a CBI probe.
The HC had ordered a preliminary CBI probe acting on the report of a judicial officer after he found that collection of royalty from trucks laden with mining material was going on. Subsequently, Punjab had sought recalling of the order and submitted that FIRs have been registered and measures are being put in place to check illegal mining. It had also requested the court to allow the state to probe these FIRs and recall order on the CBI probe.
The high court has now disposed of the plea, but directed the state to conduct a probe into three FIRs and also take action against the officials if found guilty in departmental probes. It has also asked Punjab to apprise the court by August about its proposal to bring in amendments in the mining regulation law as well as other measures for receiving and redressal of complaints pertaining to illegal mining.
“We find that measures proposed by the state government are sufficient and effective in dealing with illegal nakas for collecting gunda tax,” the court said in its judgment to the proposal of the government that districtlevel task force would be set up and online complaint redressal system would be put in place.