The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has banned desilting and dredging activities in Rajasthan’s Bisalpur dam, saying it had been started recently through a sand mining tender for 20 years without obtaining prior environmental clearance. The tender was issued to a private firm as a “guaranteed annual return contract”.
The NGT’s Central Zone Bench, headquartered in Bhopal, has held that the award of the contract involved keeping a watch on the quantity of silt, including minerals in the form of sand, and there was a conscious decision for sharing benefit from extraction by requiring the contractor to pay a substantial amount to the tenderer, the Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project Corporation.
In its 90-page judgment delivered last week, the NGT has restrained the corporation and the firm from proceeding with desilting and dredging at Bisalpur dam, and extraction of minerals and their disposal, unless the contractor obtained environmental clearance under the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification of 2006.
The Bisalpur dam, constructed in 1990s on the Banas river in Tonk district, is considered a lifeline reservoir of drinking water for Jaipur, Ajmer and Tonk districts. The dam also supplies irrigation water to Sawai Madhopur and Tonk districts.
Dinesh Bothra, a resident of Jodhpur, had moved a petition before the NGT, while pointing out that the State authorities had proposed sand removal through the tender without preparing the District Survey Report (DSR) classifying it as desilting. The tender, issued for 240 months, did not align with the Sustainable Sand Mining Management Guidelines, 2016, and Enforcement and Monitoring Guidelines for Sand Mining, 2020, the petitioner said.
The corporation issued online bids on behalf the State government’s Mines Department with the stated objective of reclamation of the dam’s storage capacity by desilting, and the tender’s defined scope of work primarily involved sand mining, described as the removal of silt, sand and gravel mixed overburden deposited in the submergence of the dam, using mechanical means, including dredgers.
Mr. Bothra contended that this approach contradicted the guidelines and the Supreme Court’s directive on the DSR provisions. The NGT observed that desilting or dredging activities in the guise of mineral extraction through mining operations could not be allowed without following the environmental law and without obtaining other requisite clearances and permissions under the law, as well as compliance with the conditions of the guidelines.
The NGT Bench, comprising Justice Sudhir Agarwal and Afroz Ahmad, also directed the Rajasthan State Pollution Control Board to take appropriate preventive, prohibitive, punitive and remedial action against the defaulters if the tribunal’s directions and the environmental laws were not complied with.
“In our view, it is not a case of regular or annual maintenance or upkeep since desilting is sought to be followed after a little lesser than two decades. Further, it is not a non-revenue operation,” the Bench observed. Since desilting in the dam’s submerged area or the river bed affected the environment, the appraisal of environmental impact in accordance with applicable laws was necessary, it said.
The initial cost of the contract was ₹258.54 crore. The NGT held that the intended activity sought to be undertaken through the tender was extraction of minerals through a contractor with the sharing of profit. Such a desilting operation, which was effectively a mining activity, could not proceed without complying with laws and procedures, the Bench said.
