Chandigarh, May 22: The Punjab government’s much-touted auction of sand quarries is full of many anomalies and expected to jack up sand prices manifold.
But the officials behind the auction claimed that they were successful in breaking cartels and managed to earn good revenue for the government. The previous Akali-BJP government earned much criticism for cartelising the trade, leading to exorbitant increase in prices.
The moot question is would the sand be in the reach of the common man building a house or it would turn out to be too costly for him? On Saturday, the mining wing of the state industries department auctioned 89 quarries and earned Rs 1,026 crore. Sources in the department say in some of the quarries, the auction fetched a huge price.
“There’s a lot of churning going on in sand mining and the government has managed to break the cartel, and auctioned quarries at a good price. In case, a contractor who took away the quarries at a high price is unable to run the quarries, he can return the same to the department and have to pay the price,” said Amit Dhaka, director, mining, who admitted that there are anomalies because a new system has been put in place.
News Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com
