The Supreme Court’s newest indictment of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh over unlawful sand mining in and round the inter-state Nationwide Chambal Gharial Sanctuary displays years of judicial frustration with persistent administrative apathy, resulting in an environmental and governance disaster.
The apex courtroom, which took suo motu cognizance of the matter in March, was notably harsh on Rajasthan in its Might 26 order, slamming its “wholly informal, detached and indolent” conduct, and rebuking the state administration for demonstrating “persistent inaction” and a “disturbing lack of seriousness”.
Sand mining was prohibited in the Chambal sanctuary in 2006 however unlawful extraction has continued and flourished over the years underneath organised syndicates. The indiscriminate sand extraction has severely disrupted the Chambal’s riverine ecosystem, damaging aquatic habitats and threatening environmental flows, placing in danger the survival of endangered gharials, freshwater dolphins and turtles.
In 2012, an IPS officer was crushed to demise by a tractor carrying illegally mined sand in Morena, Madhya Pradesh. The Court’s Might 26 order referred to the killing of two forest guards this yr alone – one once more in Morena final month, and one other in Dholpur, Rajasthan, this January – to emphasise what it referred to as a “severe erosion of the rule of legislation” in the area.
At a listening to on Might 14, the Supreme Court expressed concern that authorities appeared to prosecute solely car drivers, whereas failing to research the financiers, contractors, operators and masterminds controlling unlawful mining syndicates. “Such a lackadaisical sample of investigation… raises severe considerations relating to… potential connivance at numerous ranges of the administrative and enforcement equipment.”
The Court pressured that environmental governance couldn’t stay depending on repeated judicial intervention and authorities should guarantee “sustained and proactive enforcement” to curb unlawful mining in the Chambal sanctuary panorama.
On forest personnel allegedly missing enough weapons to counter closely armed mining mafias, the Court mentioned: “The State can’t be permitted to plead helplessness.”
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‘Helplessness’
Nonetheless, helplessness is what Madhya Pradesh successfully cited as lengthy again as December 2021, when it proposed opening 292 hectares for mining throughout 5 stretches of the Chambal and its tributary Parvati rivers. The state argued that permitting regulated mining would free the Forest Division from devoting an excessive amount of time, assets and efforts to combating unlawful extraction inside the sanctuary.
In 2022, the Nationwide Inexperienced Tribunal (NGT) accepted the findings of a committee constituted to arrange an motion plan for the Chambal sanctuary that “mafias are utilizing inside routes for conducting unlawful mining in the nationwide park, that are supported by political individuals and are effectively geared up with weapons”.
In January 2023, Madhya Pradesh went forward and denotified 207 hectares of the Chambal sanctuary. However, it did not justify the determination earlier than the NGT and needed to withdraw it in February 2025.
Equally, Rajasthan denotified 732 hectares of the Chambal sanctuary in December 2025 to facilitate mining and urbanisation tasks. The Supreme Court stayed the notification final month.
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Significance of Chambal
Due to darkish, foreboding myths round the Chambal – from a narrative linking its origins to a mountain of dripping leather-based, to the perception that Draupadi cursed its waters – the river, by all means mightier than the Yamuna, has remained one in every of India’s most pristine. No nice cities or shrines got here up on its banks, with the isolation later fostering the badland fame of the Chambal ravines as a spot the place all method of black sheep — insurgent tribesmen and later bandits – discovered refuge.
The Chambal’s splendid isolation began to wane after folks residing in the arid districts of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh began transferring into the area. By 1960, the first dam on the Chambal – Gandhi Sagar – was constructed on the Rajasthan-Madhya Pradesh border. In the subsequent 5 many years, six main irrigation tasks – Rana Pratap Sagar, Jawahar Sagar and Kota barrage, Parbati Choose-up Weir, Harish Chander Sagar and Gudha dam – 12 medium, 134 minor and several other panchayat-level tasks got here up in the Chambal basin. There are a lot of extra in the pipeline whereas work continues on a number of dozen.
Sand mining is an extra problem. Since there is nonetheless no expertise to make use of desert sand for building, the strain is completely on riverbanks, reservoirs, and coasts.
Based on a tough estimate revealed in its Sand Mining Framework in 2018, the Ministry of Mines put India’s sand demand at round 700 million tonnes in monetary yr 2016-17, rising at 6-7% yearly. For provide, the framework reported 229 million tonnes of river sand manufacturing and one other 22 million tonnes manufactured from coal-mine overburden.
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Manufacturing knowledge from 4 main sand-producing states – Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab – was not included in the 2018 framework. Even so, a provide hole of at the least 40% underlines the scope for unlawful mining.
Nonetheless, sand is nonetheless the greatest insurance coverage against coastal and riverbank erosion. And regardless of the threats to it, the Chambal nonetheless has the highest conservation worth amongst rivers in the larger Gangetic basin. Its aquatic ecosystem and forest panorama assist greater than 550 species, it hosts the largest contiguous and most viable breeding populations of the critically endangered gharial and the red-crowned roofed turtle, and has one in every of the most vital habitats of the Gangetic dolphin, Indian skimmer, black-bellied tern, sarus crane and a number of endangered turtle species.
Moreover, the Chambal is an important hall for dispersal of wildlife in an in any other case fragmented forest panorama throughout greater than a dozen nationwide parks and sanctuaries, reminiscent of Ranthambore, Keladevi, Kuno-Palpur, Madhav and Darrah-Mukundra.
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