Court Asks Govt To Comply With Supreme Court Guidelines While Allowing Gravel Mining

Jaipur: The Jaipur bench of the Rajasthan High Court on Tuesday gave conditional sanction to sand mining from Banas river. The court asked the state government to comply with the Supreme Court guidelines while allowing mining of sand from the river.

The Supreme Court today asked the Jaipur Metro Development Authority to seek permission from the Ministry of Environment and Forests for carrying out sand mining from river bed for its metro rail project.

A special forest bench of justices K S Radhakrishnan and C K Prasad said the MoEF shall consider within 10 days any application moved by the metro corporation for excavating sand from the river bed. The apex court passed the direction after Attorney General G E Vahanvati told the bench that the project development had been adversely affected after the Rajasthan High Court recently restrained any type of mining activities from Banas river.

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.

Jaipur: Those development projects which came to a halt for want of bajari (sand) will be anxiously looking forward to the Supreme Court decision on Monday as there is a desperate need to resume the work soon to meet the deadline.

The Supreme Court has fixed the hearing for Monday after a team of officials from the Jaipur Metro Rail Corporation (JMRC) and the Jaipur Development Authority filed a special leave petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court, following a Rajasthan High Court order against mining sand from the Banas river.

This time it is not merely crying wolf! The Indian Gray Wolf, inhabiting scrub lands and the ravines along the banks of the Central Indian rivers, needs protection. The immediate threat to the Indian wolf ( Canis lupus pallipes ), found along the banks of the Yamuna, Chambal, Banas and Mahi rivers, is the destruction of its habitat due to sand mining, cultivation and levelling of the ravines.