Anantnag: The alleged illegal mining of boulders and sand from Anantnag water bodies continues unabated and that too in broad daylight, notwithstanding the inclement weather, right under the nose of the administration.
The illegal miners are plundering major water bodies including Lidder River, Jhelum, and Brengi Nallah in different parts of this South Kashmir district. All that the administration has been able to pull off is seizing vehicles used for transportation of the illegally mined boulders and/or sand.
“The vehicles get released after a due process and they resume the plundering,” the sources in the district administration told Kashmir Reader.
On the Lidder River the alleged “mafia” mines for boulders at several spots, including Akura Mattan, Sakhras, Lower Ahlan, Upper Ahlan, Sallar, Yenner, Dalseer, Jaibal, Ganeshpora, and some other places. “Tractors are driven down into the Lidder, which is low on water flow these days, and the boulders are directly loaded into these vehicles for further transportation,” the local sources told Kashmir Reader. “More than 65 tractors operate between Akura Mattan to Langanbal in Pahalgam. They are not even leaving an inch of the Lidder.”
A local led this reporter to one of the spots in Akura Mattan, where at least eight tractors were parked down into the Lidder River and were being loaded with boulders.
“And it is not just here. The plunder and the loot continue across the length of the Lidder River,” the local told Kashmir Reader.
The same practice is rampant along the length of Brengi Nallah in the district, where sometimes even heavy machinery like JCBs are used to extract the boulders. “The upper Brengi areas of Vailoo and Gadol are the worst hit and it is immensely disturbing because all the farmland in these areas is dependent on this Nallah for irrigation,” sources in the district administration told Kashmir Reader.
They lamented that this year many farmers had to plant corn in place of paddy as water scarcity hit these areas. “And unfortunately there is no stopping these goons, who plunder the water bodies in broad daylight,” the concerned sources said.
This mindless extraction is also detrimental to the fragile environment as well as the habitat of different species. “Like the brown trout fish that is mostly found in Brengi Nallah and is becoming extinct as the extraction continues,” the sources said.
In the Jhelum river, Sand extraction is rampant in Bijbehara, Sangam, Chechkoot, Halmulla, Batnegoo, and some other areas. “This will ultimately cause flooding as we have seen in 2014. We are not learning our lessons,” a local in the Bjbehara area of the district told Kashmir Reader.
This reporter talked to Showkat Ahmad, the District Manager of the Geology and Mining department who said that the teams remain deployed in these areas and vehicles are often seized.
“Last year we seized hundreds of vehicles from different parts of the district,” he said. The inclement weather, he said, had been a deterrent for these people for a while.
“Now that they have started again, we will deploy teams first thing in the morning,” he said.

Suhail A Shah