Sand smuggling is continuing unabated in Krishna district despite the ‘preventive measures’ by the official machinery since the sand mafia is enjoying the support of the politicos.
While the government stopped the sand auctions due to legal and administrative issues as well as pressure from the politicos for more than a year, the sand mafia is minting money by transporting the sand from Krishna river using trucks, mini trucks, passenger auto-rickshaws and even bullock carts on both sides of the river Krishna in Krishna and Guntur districts.
As auction for the sand mining was not held, the government is losing its royalty of more than Rs 100 crore revenue every year on sand quarrying, according to the official sources.
Nearly 40 sand reaches are located along the Krishna river in the district from Jaggaiahpet mandal upstream of Prakasam barrage to downstream of the river in Avanigadda mandal in Diviseema.
Sand smuggling is a regular phenomenon in Ibrahimpatnam, Kanchikacharla, Nandigama, Chandarlapadu, Jaggaiahpet, Penamaluru, Thotlavalluru, Challapalli, Ghantasala, Pamarru and Avanigadda mandals of Krishna district.
Besides, sand is also smuggled from rivulets of Munneru and Tammileru in Krishna district. The officials are facing a challenging task of preventing the illegal sand quarrying. Most of the illegal sand extracted from the reaches is used for construction activity particularly in the construction of buildings, houses, and government projects.
Indiscriminate sand extraction is likely to create environmental problems in future. The contractors who get the rights for quarrying are exceeding their limits in extracting more sand deep into the river beds.
This will create many environmental problems in future.
Ground water levels decline in nearby villages along the river due to indiscriminate digging of sand quarries. Besides, there is a threat to the low lying areas along the river during the rainy season. The flood waters can inundate nearby village causing wide spread destruction and loss of lives.
Indiscriminate digging of sand quarries is very dangerous,said A Varaprasada Rao, the deputy director of ground water, Krishna district.
Keeping in view of these reasons, the government stopped the auctions to sand reaches for more than a year.
Now, the district water management agency (DWMA) which is taking the responsibility of conducting auctions is identifying some new reaches in the district for the auctions. The project director of DWMA T Anil Kumar said four departments are conducting survey to identify the new sand reaches in the district for the auctions.
In spite of the vigilance and enforcement department raids and preventive measures taken by the revenue, mining, Police and other departments, the sand smuggling is continuing unabated. The primary reason for this is the laws are not stringent.
The smugglers are least bothered about the penalty collected by officials. M Nageswara Rao a resident of Ibrahimpatnam said there is no impact of collecting penalty from the sand smugglers. He said harsh punishments can prevent sand smuggling to some extent.
Till last year, mines and geology department used to conduct auctions and had powers on sand quarrying. Of late, the government entrusted the responsibility to DWMA on sand auctions and supervision of quarries.
The Project Director of DWMA T Anil Kumar said the revenue department has taken the responsibility of checking sand smuggling.
A truck load of sand is sold at between Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000 depending on the demand. Interestingly, the sand mafia enjoys the patronage of main stream political parties.
It is very common that the leaders of both ruling Congress and Opposition TDP leaders indulge in blame game alleging that the other group of leaders are behind the sand mafia.
It may be recalled here that sand mafia had even made an attempt to kill several Village Revenue Officers (VRO) and Tahasildars in Krishna district in the past one year.