With an estimated demand of 20 million tonnes of sand every year in Punjab, and end consumers getting tractor-trolleys at sky-high prices, thanks to an alleged mafia controlling the illegal business pocketing crores, construction required a huge Political is the election issue in Punjab
Before 2005, sand was a commodity that came very cheap. But with the boom in the real estate business and several road projects coming up in the state, the demand for sand increased manifold, which caught the attention of both politicians and the mafia.
In 2007 the then SAD-BJP The government started auctioning mines for the first time. Since then, sand has been an issue before every government in the state.
while the chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi State Congress President Navjot Singh Sidhu has been claiming that he has tried to snatch the issue from the opposition parties by reducing the price of sand at pit-head from Rs 9 per cubic feet to Rs 5.5. than announced by the Govt.
Sidhu has promised a plan to not only bring down the price of sand, but to create several thousand crores for the state exchequer by regulating it through his Punjab model. On the other hand, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Convenor and Chief Minister of Delhi Arvind Kejriwal Has said that if his party comes to power, it will end illegal mining, create Rs 20,000 crore every year for the state and fund welfare schemes in the state, including a monthly cash transfer of Rs 1,000 to women.
Channi has also been saying that he wanted to make sand free but he could not do so because the previous government had given the contract for the mines for three years. He has indicated that once the contract expires, he can give it away for free.
Sidhu has been saying in his Punjab model that the sand business is run by the mafia and is benefitting some powerful people of the system. He said that there are about 102 mining sites in 14 districts of Punjab with an estimated demand of 24-30 million tonnes of sand annually. It can be heavily capitalized for revenue generation and employment in direct benefit of the state and its people.
If the sand mining policy is implemented systematically, the sector has the potential to generate revenue up to Rs 2000-3000 crores with the potential to generate 5,000 direct jobs and 15,000-20,000 indirect jobs in the next 5 years.
The ground reality check revealed that the contractors were not yet able to provide sand at the rate of Rs 5.5 per cubic foot as they had stated that they had given money to the state government for the contract and it was not possible for them to do so. They reduce the contract. prices. A contractor in Gurdaspur, however, said that he was selling sand only at Rs 5.5 per cubic foot but the transportation costs were high.
“For example, if I send a 25 ton truck from Pathankot to Bathinda, it will cost Rs 50,000. 30,000 is the cost of transportation. Where to blame the contractors? He said that the prices of fine sand – extracted from the river bed – and coarse sand produced after crushing of gravel – were different. “It is clear. Coarse sand will be more expensive when labor is involved.”
There is an alleged politico-sand mafia nexus in the political narrative of the state. AAP’s co-in-charge Raghav Chadha had raided CM Chamkaur Sahib’s constituency last month and said that illegal mining was happening on a large scale in the area. He had said that the mafia was active in that section which incidentally was the CM’s area. A day later, Kejriwal called Channi a “chor” who was indulging in illegal sand mining. Earlier, former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had created a stir in the political circles by publicly saying that he had a list of Congress MLAs engaged in illegal sand mining. The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) took a dig at the Congress and hit out at Amarinder for not taking action against such MLAs.
The SAD is also accused of sand mining accounts as it used to allot mines on reverse bidding and earn only up to Rs 30 crore from the exchequer every year. Amarinder’s government changed the system to progressive bidding and the state is earning around Rs 300 crore every year.
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