Posted on July 22, 2024
Haridwar (Uttarakhand): Using disaster management and relief in the fragile eco-zone of the Himalayas as a reason, the Uttarakhand government has courted controversy and severe criticism from Hindu seers among others, for inviting private players to dredge and auction sub-minerals from the river Ganga in Haridwar.
It was a languid noon earlier this month at the Kankhal ashram of Matri Sadan, an environmental organisation run by Hindu seers in Haridwar. The verdant ashram was full of fruit-laden mango trees that saw a sumptuous harvest this year. Having undertaken more than 50 fasts in the last two decades to save the Ganga from illegal mining, the seers were planning another fast this month to push back against yet another attempt by the government with potential for damaging an eco-sensitive area of the river.
What did the Uttarakhand government do?
The Haridwar administration recently invited a tender for “dredging and auction” of sub-minerals in an eco-sensitive Chandi Pul area of the Ganga which falls under the Kumbh zone. As per a 2018 order of the Uttarakhand High Court, the government is bound to ensure that its “sanctity shall be maintained at every cost”.
No bidder turned up for the tender, following protests by Matri Sadan.
More importantly, the manner in which the tender was issued flouting all rules raises serious concerns about the commitment of the Uttarakhand’s BJP government to save the Ganga.
What prompted the tender?
The tender was invited on June 24 following a hurried exchange of letters between Haridwar district magistrate (DM) Dhiraj Singh Garbyal and Uttarakhand’s Chief Standing Counsel (CSC) before the state’s high court, C.S. Rawat.
Dhiraj Singh Garbyal.
In a letter dated June 15, DM Garbyal wrote to CSC Rawat that due to heavy rainfall last year, dredging could not be performed in the Ganga. Since there was a possibility of similar floods this year, the DM sought legal advice for dredging in the Ganga from the counsel.
On June 18, CSC Rawat wrote back saying that the district magistrate “has power to give directions to the concerned authorities to carry out the dredging operation/channelisation work of river Ganga”.
Within the week, on June 24, the Haridwar district administration issued a notification inviting tenders from private agencies “for the removal of debris/RBM/silt” that “may cause damage to life and property”. [RBM or River Bed Material is a reference to sand, gravel, boulders and silt found on riverbeds].
In the same tender, it also sought “public auction of sub-minerals” gathered at as many as six designated places around the Chandi Pul area with a specified base-price.
While no bidder turned up, the advice and the tender was flawed on several counts. Matri Sadan told The Wire, that if followed through, it “could have led to an environmental catastrophe”.
Deliberate concealment of facts?
The CSC in his letter to the Haridwar DM cited the Disaster Management Act 2005 to justify his advice and wrote that the Act “empowers the District Magistrate…to carry out dredging/canalization of river in exceptional circumstances.” He then quoted Section 34 (d) of the Disaster Management Act 2005 and noted that it provides that “for the purpose of assisting, protecting or providing relief to the community, in response to any threatening disaster situation or disaster, the District Authority may remove debris, conduct search and carry out rescue operations”.
What Rawat failed to mention was that the Act only talks about the removal of debris, and doesn’t mention dredging or mining. In fact, the word dredging doesn’t appear in the Act at all.
In his letter to the DM, Rawat also quoted a High Court ruling dated 14.2.2023 to support his argument and wrote that the High Court had permitted “the state to undertake the activity of dredging in the eco-sensitive zone entirely on its own.”
What Rawat again did not highlight was that in the same order the Court had actually prohibited dredging when undertaken by a private agency. The high court clearly said that it was permitting “the state to undertake the activity of dredging in the eco-sensitive zone entirely on its own, without the involvement of private agencies.”
The high court also took strong exception to the entry of private players in such zones and noted that “under the garb of dredging, what is permitted, and what is actually carried out, is the activity of mining for commercial purposes”. The court added that “the grant of a contract to a private agency for the purpose of dredging, and also winning the dredging material, would lead to carrying out of the said activity purely for commercial purposes. The private agency would have its commercial interests in mind, and not the environmental interest, which is the rationale for carrying out dredging activity in the first place.”
The court went onto say that “once the (dredging) activity is entrusted to a private agency, and that too with a right to carry out mining activity i.e., to win the material which is dredged, the extent of dredging that may be carried out on the site is very difficult to monitor or control”.
“The moment the dredged mineral is removed for commercial purposes, the nature of activity would change from merely dredging to mining, which is clearly prohibited in an eco-sensitive zone,” the court had said.
The CSC chose not to cite the above part of the ruling in his recommendation to the district magistrate.
Profit or ‘disaster management’?
If at all the government wanted to create an exception to meet an emerging threat or an emergency, and hence wanted to allow dredging to mitigate an impending threat, a step to tackle disaster can’t be converted into a commercial activity. Though Matri Sadan says, there is no such threat around Chandi Pul area.
As the tender sought to auction sub-minerals and RBM, it raised questions over intentions, whether it was to tackle a disaster in the future, or to hand over the area to private players.
“The tender converted dredging into a commercial activity. It wanted to auction sub-minerals. How can you earn money out of an act that is being done in the name of averting disaster?” asks Swami Shivananda Saraswati, the founder of Matri Sadan.
Swami Shivananda Saraswati at Matri Sadan.
“The Disaster Management Act talks about the removal of debris, but the tender also included RBM. Debris includes the accumulated material like plastic, wire, goods etc, while RBM constitutes stones and boulders,” he says.
Sub minerals are minor minerals found in rivers, while RBM includes sand, stones and boulders. “Under the pretext of sand mining, the government has been extracting and auctioning both the sub-minerals and RBM which are crucial for the ecosystem of the river,” says Saraswati.
“You can desilt the river, but you can’t take out stones and boulders from the river in the name of desilting. Stones and boulders are non-replenishable. Their removal from the riverbed would have inflicted irreparable loss to the Ganga,” Swami Shivananda adds.
Locals told The Wire that the mining mafia is not interested in sand, as they want stones and boulders. In the name of removing silt, they actually remove stones and boulders and damage the river’s ecology.
Significantly, while many Hindu organisations in Uttarakhand are working in tandem with the BJP, and have been promoting policies of the state government and are usually in lock step with Hindutva issues, Matri Sadan has single-mindedly pursued a struggle to preserve the holiness of the Ganga and other Himalayan rivers. They say they have often faced opposition by local mafia, and even lost their seers to fasts when the BJP governments turned deaf to their pleas to save the Ganga.
Chandi Pul.
Chandi Pul is in the Kumbh area
In Haridwar, the Ganga flows between the two hills that houses temples of Chandi Devi and Mansa Devi. Chandi Pul is the bridge that connects Chandi Devi to the city.
Yet another questionable aspect in the tender was that it sought to open an area for auction of minerals that falls under the Kumbh zone.
Speaking to The Wire at his ashram, Swami Shivananda underlined that the argument about the need of dredging at Chandi Pul is baseless. “You only have to visit the spot to find with your own eyes that the Ganga bed is quite vast at Chandi Pul, with a lot of space for the water to flow. Even if more water arrives here, it’s not likely to breach the banks.”
A visit to the Chandi Pul by The Wire made it clear that the river was wide there, Matri Sadan also shared satellite images of the area over the last twelve years which show that the Ganga at Chandi Pul has never posed a threat so far.
Accumulation of debris on the Ganga bed at Chandi Pul in Haridwar.
When the administration went ahead with the tender, Brahamchari Sudhanand of Matri Sadan wrote a letter to Rawat on June 28, and pointed out that his recommendation was “in complete contradiction with several judicial precedents and current proceedings”. Matri Sadan reminded the CSC that during a recent hearing before the Uttarakhand HC on June 14, “you argued extensively for at least 20 minutes for (seeking) permission to conduct dredging activities” in the Ganga, but the court didn’t “grant permission” “despite your efforts”.
Pointing out that the CSC had still gone ahead with the recommendation. Matri Sadan wrote that his legal advice “is directly contemptuous.”
The letter says, “All ongoing mining, dredging and stone crushing activities were completely banned in the notified Kumbh area… No commercial mining, dredging and canalization has been carried out in this stretch and (the) status quo is being maintained since Kumbh 2010.”
In fact, in its order in 2018, the high court had said that the “sanctity” of the “area marked strictly for religious ceremony (including preservation and conservation of the area marked for Kumbh)”, shall “be maintained at every cost”.
The Wire sent a detailed questionnaire to the Haridwar DM, about the issuance of tender, auctioning of sub-minerals in the name of disaster management and choice of the zone.
The district administration said in its reply, “The tender was invited only after obtaining the due legal opinion we had sought from the CSC.”
The Wire also sent a detailed questionnaire to the CSC. This story will be updated when it gets a response.
Uttarakhand is in a high eco-sensitive zone, and has seen several ecological disasters in the past, including the 2013 Kedarnath tragedy and the recent subsidence of Joshimath. The disasters were largely man-made, say environmentalists, the tragedies are often exacerbated by the government’s antipathy towards ecological concerns.
By carrying on this path, the state’s BJP government may be courting another environmental disaster in the state’s showpiece holy town.
