CUTTACK: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has constituted a committee to probe alleged illegal mining of sand by a lessee from Budhabalanga river at Dingiria under Badsahi Tahasil in Mayurbhanj district.The NGT’s East Zone bench in Kolkata formed the Committee on Tuesday on an application which came up with allegations of illegal mining by a lessee without renewal of environmental clearance (EC) and consent to operate (CTO) and excess mining causing huge loss to the state exchequer.
The bench of Justice B Amit Sthalekar (judicial member) and Saibal Dasgupta (expert member) said, “The matter requires consideration.Considering the allegations made in the original application, we deem it appropriate to constitute a committee comprising senior scientist, State Environment Impact Assessment Authority, Odisha, senior scientist of Odisha State Pollution Control Board, District Magistrate Mayurbhanj or his representative not below the rank of sub-divisional magistrate of that area and district mining officer Mayurbanj.”
‘The Odisha State Pollution Control Board shall act as the Nodal office for all logistic purposes,’ the bench said, while directing the committee to inspect the site in question with regard to the allegations made by the applicant and submit its report within a period of one month. The bench fixed April 22 as next date for hearing of the case.Radha Mohan Singh, a resident of the region filed the petition alleging illegal mining of sand over 878 acres leasehold area. Advocate Sankar Prasad Pani appeared on the petitioner’s behalf. The EC and CTO were granted to the lessee in 2017 and were valid up to March 31, 2021.
According to the order, the petition had pointed out that the daily mining permissible limit is nine cubic metres and annual sand mining capacity is 2,000 cubic metres whereas the lessee is extracting 2,295 cubic metres per day and 4.819 lakh cubic metres per year which is 240 times of the permissible limit. Consequently, it was causing huge revenue loss to the State exchequer of around Rs 43.68 crore considering the value of one cubic metre of sand to be Rs 1,365 in addition to environmental degradation.