Mafia exploit the huge gap between demand & supply of sand in the region that's seeing a boom in real estate.
The suspension of IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal who took on the sand mafia is all but a glimpse of the dark underbelly of the resplendent real estate blitz in Noida and Greater Noida – which are projected as the future destinations for commercial and residential real estate.
Here lies ignorance and compliance on the part of the state government to such illegal activities.
Realty development projections in the region reveal that unless government makes an immediate intervention, the problem will acquire unmanageable proportions with huge impact on ecology in the years to come.
Consider this: Five lakh units (average of 1,000 square feet each) are under construction in the Noida and Greater Noida region to be handed over in the next three years.
Construction of these units will happen at an estimated cost of about Rs 1,75,000 crore (average of Rs 3,500 per sqft).
At one per cent of the construction cost, the size of the quarrying service required to sustain this development comes to Rs 1,750 crore. This converts into a 2,62,500 tonne requirement for the projects in Noida and Greater Noida area itself in the next three years in the ongoing projects.
“This is only the requirement in the Noida and Greater Noida region. If we factor in the other growth areas such as the Yamuna Expressway and Ghaziabad, the requirement will grow almost three times. Also, more projects will be launched in all these areas as the economy grows,” a real estate developer having presence in the area told dna.
Also, the number of developers waiting for that precious sand is also big. According to the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’Association of India (CREDAI), 110 prominent builders have a major presence in Noida and Greater Noida.
The supply side constraints, meanwhile, is the predominant reason fuelling illegal quarrying in the region. This is because the numbers of legal sand mines are nowhere close to satisfying the huge supply requirement of the region.
Sand mining requires environmental clearance from authorities – in some cases from the state and in some other, the Centre – that are difficult and slow to come, some time taking years.
While refusing to divulge the number of clearances given for mining sand, an environment ministry official said, “Environmental clearances given for mining sand in the last few years are not huge. States play an important role in giving mining leases for smaller areas as that comes under their jurisdiction.”
It is this demand supply gap in the legal quarrying that is being exploited by the sand mafia. While the legal sand costs Rs 12 per cubic feet (Rs 20,000 per truck), illegally mined sand comes at almost half the price, which is an attractive proposition for the the local muscle men.
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