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.
