The Centre has decentralised the process of granting environmental clearance for sustainable sand mining and mining of minor minerals and has also prepared guidelines for sustainable sand mining.
A District Environment Impact Assessment Authority (DEIAA) has been created for proper monitoring of sand mining, said Prakash Javadekar, Minister of State (independent charge) of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, at a press conference on Thursday.
A district level committee, headed by a District Magistrate or District Collector, will give environmental clearance for mining lease area up to five hectares for individual lease and 25 hectares in cluster.
The DEIAA will be responsible for grant of environmental clearance for category ‘B2’ projects for mining of minor minerals, for all the districts in the country, an official release said.
Javadekar said that the Ministry has taken several policy initiatives and enacted environmental and pollution control legislations to prevent indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources and to promote integration of environmental concerns in developmental projects.
He said that information technology and information technology-enabled services will be used to track mined out minerals. The movement of mined out material and sand will be controlled through transit permit.
The security feature of transit permit include printing on IBA approved MICR paper, unique barcode, unique QR code, fugitive ink background, invisible ink mark, void pantograph and watermark. Bar coding and SMS will be used to monitor the mined out material from source to destination.
The Minister added that amendments in Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006, have been notified in the Gazette of India.
To assist the authority for the districts, the Ministry has also constituted an 11-member District Level Expert Appraisal Committee (DEAC) for all the districts of the country that will include an executive engineer from the Irrigation Department, a geologist and representatives from remote sensing or ground water departments.