HC gives Punjab 6 months to devise mechanism to check illegal mining

The court passed the order on a Rupnagar man’s plea who alleged that illegal royalty was being collected from trucks carrying sand and gravel

The Punjab and Haryana high court has given six months to the Punjab government to put in place a robust mechanism to stop illegal mining and deal with complaints related to it.

HC gives Punjab 6 months to devise mechanism to check illegal mining

The high court bench of justices Jaswant Singh and Ashok Kumar Verma passed the order on February 26 (made available now) on a plea of Bachittar Singh of Rupnagar, who had alleged that royalty was being collected from trucks carrying gravel and had demanded a CBI probe.

The HC had ordered a preliminary CBI probe acting on the report of a judicial officer after he found that collection of royalty from trucks laden with mining material was going on. Subsequently, Punjab had sought recalling of the order and submitted that FIRs have been registered and measures are being put in place to check illegal mining. It had also requested the court to allow the state to probe these FIRs and recall order on the CBI probe.

“We find that measures proposed by the state government are sufficient and effective in dealing with illegal nakas for collecting gunda tax,” the court said in its judgment to the proposal of the government that district-level task force would be set up and online complaint redressal system would be put in place.