Chandigarh, April 7: In an effort to check spiralling prices of sand and gravel, the state government is planning to bring a mechanism in the amended mining policy to regulate operations of stone crushers and prices of minerals for end-users.
The Cabinet sub-committee on mining, which met here for the first time on Friday to frame the policy aimed at boosting revenue by plugging loopholes in the existing one, hinted at regulating the sand prices.
On the pattern of the stone crusher policy of Himachal Pradesh, a proposal was mooted to give priority to the owners of stone crushers to bid for mines to extract the raw material. The royalty to be charged from a crusher will be on the basis of power consumption.“It has been seen that the raw material is brought on tampered slips issued by mining contractors.
In some cases, it is shown that the raw material is being brought from Himachal Pradesh or Jammu and Kashmir, but is instead illegally sourced from within the state,” said an officer who attended the meeting.
In the meeting chaired by Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu and attended by Finance Minister Manpreet Badal, Rural Development Minister Tript Rajinder Bajwa, Chief Secretary Karan Avtar and other officials, the committee met various stakeholders —sand mining contractors and stone crusher owners. It will submit its report to the government by month-end.
The sub-committee also discussed introducing e-transport permit and bar-coded permit, which will not only result in regulating the online portal, but will also provide handy information on volume, origin point, destination and timing. The weighing slips issued in the present policy are easy to tamper with.
Overloaded trucks causing damages to roads were also discussed.It was suggested that instead of two types of bidding — reverse and progressive — it should be of uniform type. Besides, the amount of quantity present in the mining quarries auctioned earlier should be ascertained scientifically.
Source Tribune India
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