Mining in Aravalli continues unabated despite a Supreme Court ban on it.

The consequent price in terms of human casualty is huge - on Thursday, at least 10 labourers were feared killed when a stone mine collapsed due to blasting in the forest land near Bhiwadi in Rajasthan's Alwar district.

Five bodies were found, including two, on Friday. An operation was on to recover more bodies.

With this, the total toll related to mining activities in the district has risen to 48 in the past two years.

New Delhi: Miners who ravaged the Aravalis in Faridabad distict till May 2009 want to resume small-scale mining in the garb of “rehabilitation” of deep pits. In a submission to the government, their consultants have proposed to create “benches” around the pits to
facilitate afforestation – and sell the mining material generated in the process.

After Haryana ban, illegal mining shifts to Sikar’s hills
Who’s The Quarry?

More than 400 active leases in the Sikar belt
1,200 trucks move out of Rajasthan Aravallis daily
In Dabla alone, 50 ha of land mined
Area has five small rivers, three clogged with sludge.

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The Jaipur Metro Project on Monday rushed to the Supreme Court complaining that its construction work was badly hit by an order of the Rajasthan High Court extending the SC's ban on mining in Aravalli hill range to extraction of sand from Banas river bed.

Appearing for the metro project, scheduled to be completed by June 2013, attorney general G E Vahanvati informed a bench of Justices K S Radhakrishnan and C K Prasad that there never was a ban on extraction of sand from the river bed.

New Delhi: Ravage of ecosensitive Aravali hills for stones and construction material continues, despite the Supreme Court’s omnibus ban on mining and non-forest activity, the central empowered committee said in its report to the apex court on Monday. The CEC, which conducted an inspection on the apex court’s March 12 order, found many farmhouses have come up in Gurgaon district in blatant violation of the SC’s ban order requiring imposition of exemplary punishment, amicus curiae K Parmeshwar told a bench of Justices K S Radhakrishnan and C K Prasad.

Land in Vasant Vihar which is part of the Aravalli ecosystem was wrecked by stone mining. Scientists are now restoring greenery to attract lost species and trap pollutants. The stone quarry pits near Vasant Vihar used to cloak the area with dust and reverberate with sandstone blasting. Today, orchids dot some of these pits.

Big Cat Visits Area From Fbd-Gurgaon Side. A little over a century ago, Delhi’s forests were home to a large number of carnivores including lions, leopards and wolves. As forest land disappeared so did most of its animals. However, there is finally some hope that they might return. Officials have been tracking the presence of a leopard at Bhatti Mines for the past couple of months, which has possibly been visiting from adjoining Haryana. The animal has been seen on several occasions, but could not be photographed.

New Delhi: It was a chance spotting and the group would have just walked past had the bird not taken a sudden flight. Amitava Misra and his friends, birding in the dense Aravali Biodiversity Park foliage earlier this month, saw a highly rare visitor to Delhi — the Indian Black Eagle. The last sighting record for this bird is for the winter of 1920-21, making it a 90 year gap between the last and the recent sighting.