Srinagar: With the Jammu and Kashmir Government granting quick environment clearances and awarding more than 60 percent of mining contracts to outsiders to extract minerals from river beds in Kashmir, serious concern is being raised over the dangerous environmental impact of such a policy.
Ajaz Rasool, a hydraulic engineer, told Kashmir Reader that opening the gates for ‘unabated’ mining in the region will have devastating consequences for the environment.
“Mining is a systematic process which has to be understood based on scientific data and cannot be done in a ‘haphazard manner’, which can lead to an environmental catastrophe,” he said.
“For extracting minerals from any river, it is very important to understand the regeneration capacity of the water body, but unfortunately there is no scientific sediment data available with the government to assess the carrying capacity of Jhelum or other rivers,” he said.
He added, “A government agency must know how much quantity of minerals can be extracted from a water body, if it is done randomly it will prove costly, like the 2014 floods in the region, besides endangering the flora and fauna of the region.”
Environmental experts say that if the mining is carried out haphazardly, it will create uneven patches that will affect aquatic life, deform the water flow, and cause unusual rise of water levels at certain places.
As per government data, some 300-400 mineral blocks in Jammu and Kashmir region are annually auctioned for extraction of minerals, but this year when the central government took away the special status of the region, non-locals have got the majority of the contracts.
The locals who used to work in sand mining have been left “clueless”, said Mohammad Subhan, a local contractor. He told Kashmir Reader that for the past 20 years his labourers were manually extracting sand and gravel from the river Jehlum.
“The government has changed everything for them. They have been robbed of their livelihood,” Subhan said. “I was just 10 years old when my grandfather and father began the work of extracting sand from the Jhelum. Now a non-local has been brought here. He does not have that “attachment” to the river.”
In 2016, a plea was moved by People’s Forum (NGO) before the J&K High Court complaining of environmental degradation and the adverse impact on the ecology, landscape and natural habitation because of indiscriminate and illegal mining activity.
The court had remarked that the matter was of serious concern, following which several orders were passed by the court to preserve the environment from the depredations of mining.
The court asked the authorities to prepare a checklist delineating the responsibility of the central and the state government; the measures which are required to be undertaken to ensure strict compliance of the statutory provisions as well as the rules and the regulations; the authorities who are responsible for the same; and the steps taken to ensure the enforcement. To this day, the orders of the court have not been complied with fully.

NUSRAT SIDIQ