In Jammu riverbed mining crackdown, offenders have it easy
A nexus ensures a court-imposed ban does not come in the way of stone crushers’ operations, penalties aren’t enforced and rules are eased for violators.
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Editor's note: Last year, secretary of the Jammu and Kashmir unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party Vikram Randhawa levelled a serious accusation at his senior in the party and a minister of state in the Union cabinet, Jitendra Singh. He said Singh, a parliamentarian from Jammu, was benefiting from corruption in the Union territory’s geology and mining department, which allowed illegal riverbed mining to flourish. Within hours of the press conference, the BJP initiated disciplinary action against Randhava, and Singh filed a defamation lawsuit. Randhawa retracted his statement and apologized to the minister. But Randhawa’s outburst ended up shining the spotlight on a lawless frontier in the territory—riverbed mining. Randhawa’s wasn’t righteous indignation. In the months leading up to the press conference, his stone-crushing unit in Jammu had been investigated by the mining department and penalized to the tune of Rs 1 crore for dredging minor minerals “illegally” from the Tawi river. Thirteen other units were also fined over Rs 7 crore. The accusations and counter-accusations led The Reporters’ Collective to seek access to documents and reports of committees that inquired into …
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