Uttarakhand gov’t snatches forest conservation funds, outsources policing and royalty collection from riverbed miners to private players https://www.reporters-collective.in/trc/uttarakhand-violates-sc-orders-on-river-mining
Ignoring the conflict of interest, the BJP government has encouraged tax-collecting private companies to also mine the rivers in the ecologically-fragile Himalayan state. All done in the name of preventing disasters. The state has gone a step further, establishing by regulation, what many experts believe is a classic case of conflict of interest. Any private company that wins the rights to collect taxes from riverbed mining will also be given priority over others to mine the rivers. In other words, a mining company could now be collecting taxes from other miners and also be in charge of preventing illegal extraction of boulders, sand and gravel from the state’s rivers.
the Uttarakhand government has continuously violated the Supreme Court order which requires the state to plough the money from riverbed mining in forests into conservation – a face saver device to compensate for the damage caused to forests by ecologically harmful activities like river mining. T