Illegal sandstone for Mayawati’s parks?

The pink and red sandstone mines in Bharatpur district, wheremining is banned, have turned into virtual goldmines. This may be thanks to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati's obsession with statues and grand stone parks.

For the last one-and-half years, thousands of tonnes of pink and red sandstone have been supplied for the parks in Uttar Pradesh from the mines of Bansi Paharpur area, in Rupwas tehsil of Bharatpur. But with only three legal mines existing in this area, the big question is: Can three legal mines, with an area of one-and-half hectares each, supply such huge quantities of stone?

Interestingly, owners of two of the legal mines claim their stones have not been sent to Mayawati’s parks, while Dilip Singh Rathore, director of Mahalpurchura Mines Private Limited, the third legal mining lease-holder, said that his mines supplied at the most 2% of the total sandstone supplied to UP.

So, what about the remaining 98%?
Rathore says illegal mining activity suddenly increased in the area, particularly in Mahalpurchura village and a part of Band Baretha wildlife sanctuary, over the last one-and-half-years — the same time that UP’s demand for sandstone shot up sharply.
There are more than 200 stone-cutting units in Bayana and nearly 30 such units in and around Mahalpurchura village. Thousands of tonnes of sandstone slabs are lying at these units but neither the mining department nor the sales tax department has bothered to investigate where this material is arriving from.

“Ever since the demand for sandstone used for building the parks in UP increased, illegal mining has also increased many folds in the area. Most of the stone supplied for the parks is extracted from these illegal mines. The mafia covers it under the bills of some bogus companies,” alleged Kishori Lal, president of the Pasan Utpadak Sahkari Samiti Limited (PUSSL), an umbrella body of legal miners.

So are Mayawati’s stone dreams, directly or indirectly, leading to a boom in the illegal mining industry?
Investigations by DNA revealed that the illegal mining mafia extracts sandstone from these banned mines, accounting for them with the help of fake papers made in the name of legal mines operating far away. DNA saw such a paper drawn on a mine in the Sirondh area, which does not even produce sandstone.

This stone is then sent to the cutting units set up in RIICO (Rajasthan State Industrial Development and Investment Corporation Limited) in Bayana, and from there, it moves on to UP. “Hundreds of trucks have so far supplied thousand of tonnes of sandstone for the parks in UP. We come to know of it from the bills while charging sales tax,” said Kundan Jain, a sales tax officer at Bayana. 

MP Meena, superintending mining engineer, Bharatpur, told DNA that only three legal mine leases exist in the Bansi Paharpur area and the other mines are operating illegally. “We initiate action against them but they keep cropping up,” he said.