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Ecology & Environment
Mahesh

20/05/24 10:03 AM IST

Illegal mining in Sariska

In News
  • The Supreme Court has ordered the Rajasthan government to shutter 68 mines operating within a 1-kilometre periphery of the critical tiger habitat (CTH) of the Sariska reserve.
Background of problem
  • Local people in Sariska have repeatedly demanded the demarcation of forest boundaries on the ground.
  • Villagers have alleged that soft boundaries allow illegal mines to operate legally on paper by showing their locations outside the reserve.
  • Also, to make up for the areas lost to such concessions, revenue villages are alleged to have been arbitrarily included in the tiger reserve, impinging on the rights of residents.
  • A decade after Sariska became a tiger reserve in 1978, Rajasthan issued mining leases inside the reserve to many who had obtained no-objection certificates (NOCs) from the then field director of Sariska, even though he did not have any authority to issue such NOCs.
  • In 1993, Rajasthan’s proposal to compensate for these illegal mines by adding 5 sq km of revenue land to the reserve was rejected by the SC.
  • But the ‘swap’ happened anyway, according to two retired forest officials who have served in the Alwar district.
Concerns
  • In May 2005, the SC ordered the CBI to investigate the disappearance of tigers from the reserve in the Aravalli roughly halfway between Delhi and Jaipur.
  • That was almost a decade and a half after the court first took up the issue of illegal mining in Sariska.
  • In October 1991, in a PIL filed by a local NGO, the SC issued an interim order that “no mining operation of any nature shall be carried on in the protected area” of Sariska, and set up a fact-finding committee under the chairmanship of Justice M L Jain, a retired judge of the High Court.
  • Based on a “traced map provided by the Forest Department,” the Jain Committee found in 1992 that the protected areas covered “about 800 sq km”.
  • In April 1993, the SC ordered the closure of 262 mines within that area.
  • In January 2002, the Indian (now National) Board for Wildlife had proposed to notify areas within 10 km of national parks and sanctuaries as ESZs.
  • But after several state governments expressed concerns, the Board had asked them, in May 2005, to identify suitable areas and submit proposals for site-specific ESZs.
  • After many states failed to respond, the SC intervened in December 2006. The court warned that if the states failed to respond within four weeks, it might have to consider the original plan of ESZs of 10-km width.
  • After the 2003 CEC report, several miners joined the case concerning Sariska’s Jamua Ramgarh sanctuary.
  • The apex court finally ruled on the matter in June 2022.
  • It ordered ESZs of a minimum width of 1 km for all national parks and sanctuaries, but limited it to 500 metres for Jamua Ramgarh sanctuary as a “special case” with some leniency.
  • After multiple objections to this one-size-fits-all approach, however, the SC modified the 2022 order in April 2023.
  • The modified order left the specifics of ESZs to the Centre and the state, and focussed on mining — prohibiting it within 1 km of national parks and sanctuaries.
Source- Indian Express

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