Huge revenue pilferage

18/11/2018

Government has lost huge revenue in terms of royalty from the rivers and nallahs as open auction discouraged many participants and in almost in the entire region and districts including Reasi, Rajouri, Poonch, Udhampur, Ramban, Doda, Jammu and Samba etc one group in connivance of some insiders in the department managed to take control of ‘grey gold. It revealed that ‘grey gold mafia’ has again managed to take control of extraction of ‘minor mineral’ like sand, stones, gravel etc in the rivers and streams of the region with the top political-bureaucratic nexus. In a sheer violation of standing Government orders of conducting e-tenders and e-auction for every contract in all the Government departments and the court directives, the Geology and Mining Department has gone for open auction of blocks in rivers, streams, nallahs etc in the entire region while it has miserably failed to conduct auction in district Kathua for the last more than one year.
Out of total blocks, hardly 40 % have been auctioned in many districts and one particular group is unofficially operating in other areas as well while department claimed that the remaining areas/ blocks will be put for auction shortly. In many blocks of Akhnoor-Jourian, Khour and Nagrota in Jammu and even in Billawar, Hiranagar and Ramkote in Kathua, mafia is operating illegally. Not only this, the rates of royalty have been increased exorbitantly more than double just within 7-8 months. There is no proper criteria devised to fix the rate of royalty per vehicle (Tipper/ tractor -trolley) for sand, gravel, stones etc. After auction in Jammu the rates have reached almost double the previous ones. For finished goods (crushers’ gravel) double royalty is being charged from the vehicle operators which is ultimately theft on the pocket of the general public. While the fact remained that stone crusher operators are already made to pay the royalty of the minor mineral picked up from the rivers. There is no system to set up stone crushers. Many of them are running without NOC from the competent authorities. They are creating massive pollution. He said that Government needs to devise a proper policy to issue License for stone crushers. There is massive Revenue loss to the G&M department in Kathua and there is need to plug the leakage.

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