HP govt gets 3 months to collect penalty from erring mining units

Issuing the order of May 11,the division bench of Chief Justice Kurien Joseph and Justice R B Mishra directed the Industries department to collect the penalty within a period of three months.

The matter came to light in a civil writ petition filed by Jyotsna Rewal Dua on behalf of Harbhajan Singh of Damtal,regarding illegal mining in Damtal bridge area.

However,the Industries department is yet to wake up from its slumber to issue notices to the units.

Since many mining units are operating on the Himachal-Punjab border at Damtal and other bordering areas in Nalagarh of Soan district,the petitioner fears that since such a huge amount of penalty is involved the units might wind up and leave even before the Industries department wakes up to the issue.

Geologist with the Industries department,Arun Sharma,said,“We are yet to get official copy of the order of the case,which was decided on May 11. We would seek opinion of the Law department and soon issue notices to defaulters after calculating their overdue amount on basis of our past records and electricity bills. It would certainly be a huge amount.”

The story of goof up by the Industries department raises doubt on the mining officials who saw it through. The department has agreed in its reply to the court that according to its policy a compounding fee of Rs 5,000 should have been charged from each truck or truck load of illegal minerals (each truck carries capacity of 9 metric tonnes) along with royalty and additional penalty of Rs 500 (per truck) every time on repetition of error. But the department charged only one-time fee of Rs 5,000 from one mining unit and an additional amount of Re 1 per extra tonne transported.

A few petitions in the past had highlighted the issue of over exploitation of river bed in Damtal,sounding the alarm bell for environment hazard,following which nearly 110 crushers units were shut down after court’s directions.