Nainital
The Uttarakhand High Court has taken an unprecedented step towards the conservation of the Ganges river on Wednesday and directed to immediately close 48 stone crushers running illegally in the river floor area between Raiwala and Bhogpur in Haridwar district. The court has given the Haridwar district administration a week to close all units, cut their electricity and water supply connections and submit a compliance report.
The order was passed by a division bench of Justice Ravindra Maithani and Justice Pankaj Purohit while hearing a PIL filed in 2022 by the religious institution Matri Sadan in Haridwar. In the PIL, a large -scale mining activities have been highlighted at the bottom of the Ganges river. At the same time, authorities were accused of allowing heavy machinery to destroy the river floor. It was also alleged that it is a violation of repeated instructions by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and the National Clean Ganga Mission. Mother Sadan’s lawyer Brahmachari Sudhanand said that the court found that these stone crushers are in a hurry of the earlier orders of the High Court.
It is said that the court ordered the closure of these units on May 3, 2017, yet even after she was sealed in 2018, she was illegally mined. He said that the court has instructed the District Magistrate (DM) and Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) of Haridwar to immediately shut down all these 48 stone crushers within a week and cut their electricity and water supply.
The Matri Sadan Sanstha, led by Swami Shivanand, has long played a leading role in the Ganga Bachao Andolan. The organization has staged several fast unto -death and protests demanding complete restrictions on excavation and mining in the Ganges and its tributaries, removing stone crushers from a 5 km radius of river floor and cancellation of hydroelectric projects.
