Taking serious note of the massive illegal sand mining carried out in Dhasan River in Jhansi (Uttar Pradesh), the Supreme Court has set aside the NGT (National Green Tribunal) order and asked the tribunal to hear the matter again.
Observing that the fact finding recorded in the NGT order was completely erroneous, a two-judge Bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Abhay S. Oka and also comprising Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, has said that the tribunal ought to have gone into the allegations of breach of the terms and conditions made in the application before it.
The Dhasan River in Jhansi is a tributary of the Betwa and a second-order tributary of the Yamuna and the lifeline of the water-stressed Bundelkhand region.
Advocate Akash Vashishtha, appearing for the appellant, Naveen Kumar, submitted that as many as 31 paragraphs pointing out violations of 49 General and Specific Conditions imposed by the Environmental Clearance (EC) were disregarded outright by the tribunal. The observations of the tribunal in the order were completely inconsistent with each other, he said.
The NGT order was in complete breach of the EC, he added.
“Dhasan River is the lifeline of Bundelkhand region. The first and the foremost condition that there would be no in-stream mining is completely violated. Heavy machines were deployed for mining as against the condition that only semi-mechanized or manual mining will be allowed,” Vashishtha argued before the SC.
The apex court has asked the NGT to decide the original application afresh, as expeditiously as possible.