Early Times Report
Jammu, Aug 10: In a PIL on encroachment of bank of river Tawi, a high court division bench of Justice Dhiraj Singh Thakur and Justice B S Walai today said the encroachments, that 'have taken place over the years and still may be continued on account of negligence and connivance of official respondents, need to be dealt with seriously.
"The official respondents, first of all, must identify the exact area which forms a part of river Tawi or its banks, which otherwise should have been controlled and regulated by the irrigation and flood control department (I&FC), forest department and other government agencies. Once the extent of area is identified and property mapped, it will then be easy for respondents to immediately demolish any unauthorised construction or encroachment and to prevent such an encroachment in future," the bench said.
The bench directed the divisional commissioner, Jammu, to constitute a committee from the concerned departments of revenue, I&FC, forest, Jammu Municipal Corporation, JDA and nazool to identify and map the entire land along the banks of river Tawi right from Nagrota to Phalain Mandal.
After identifying and mapping the entire land, encroachers should be identified, and report be filed, reflecting therein the extent of encroachments, nature of the encroachments and time when the encroachments had taken place and the steps taken for removing the, the bench directed.
The court directed that a comprehensive report should be filed by the respondent, reflecting steps taken to evict the encroachers whose names figured in the July 22, 2015 status report. Failure on the part of the official authorities to act in this regard would make them liable personally, the court said.
The bench directed to download and prepare a record of satellite imagery of the entire area on fortnightly basis, which would be examined simultaneously be the concerned authorities to see as to whether the areas, which had been identified as land belonging to I&FC deparment, forest or state along the banks of river Tawi, had been encroached or not.
About pollution in Tawi, the bench directed JMC to file a detailed affidavit, reflecting steps that had been taken to prevent the free flow of sewerage water from the city drains into the river as also the steps taken to prevent dumping of municipal waste on the river banks. The petitioner's counsel stated that there was a large scale of extraction of minor minerals like sand and bajri from the Tawi bed and there was no effective mechanism to monitor it. It was urged that right from Nagrota down stream, the sand mafia was permitted to have a free hand to extract these minor minerals. The mining officer, who was present in the court, placed reliance upon SRO 133 of April 20, 2016 which incorporated Rule 104, which reads as: "104-A Transitory Provisio: As a transitory measure and in order to ensure uninterrupted supply of minor mineral to consumers, the department may issue permission valid up to July 31, 2016 for extraction of minor minerals to any existing quarry holder or to any person extracting such minor minerals or for transportation of such minerals on royalty basis." It was candidly admitted that due to paucity of staff in the geology and mining department, the extraction of minor minerals was being supervised only for a maximum of 12 hours a day even when the officers were supposed to work only for 8 hours a day. He expressed igonorance on the issue that there was any extraction of minor minerals throughout the night. The bench observed that from the statement of the mining officer, it appeared that there was no regulation on extraction of minor minerals, which 'goes on throughout the night including its transportation which takes place mostly at night. Admittedly, none of the officers of the department is present at night on the site to check whether extraction of minor minerals is taking place from the designated blocks according to the prescribed coordinates or not'. The bench directed secretary, geology and mining department and SSP, Jammu, to file comprehensive and detailed affidavits as to how they propose to check the menace of illegal extraction of minor minerals from the Tawi bed to that there was no loss of revenue to the government on account of non-payment of royalty by those involved in their extraction which was permitted only from the designated blocks. (JNF) |
