Budgam– After the National Green Tribunal -NGT constituted a high level enquiry committee to visit Sukhnag River in Beerwah Budgam for accessing damages caused to it due to illegal Riverbed Mining , the J&K Fisheries Department raided some locations in Beerwah area of Budgam on Wednesday and halted the illegal work. The team headed by Assistant Director Fisheries Budgam Mushtaq Ahmad also directed the workers of NKC Construction Company to take out their JCB & L&T cranes from the site. The action has been appreciated by locals but they say the same should have been done two years back as illegal Riverbed Mining has massively destroyed Sukhnag river which is a designated trout fish stream of Kashmir.
On Friday October 4th 2024 the NGT’s Principal Bench of Justice Prakash Srivastava (Chairperson) , Justice A K Tyagi and Dr Senthil A Veil (Expert Member) heard a petition filed by filed by Dr Raja Muzaffar Bhat noted social and environmental activist against the riverbed mining in Sukhnag that causing environmental disaster plus destroying the aquatic life especially the trout fish population.
Advocate Saurabh Sharma the counsel for the petitioner in this case apprised the NGT principal bench with factual details and produced geotagged pictures of the heavy machines and dumpers extracting boulders from the Sukhnag Nallah in violation of J&K’s Minor Mineral Concession Rules 2016. The counsel for the petitioner also argued that due to halting of water flow in May this year more than 2000 fishes were dead in a nearby Trout Fish Farm owned by a local entrepreneur Peerzada Rayees, but Govt failed to even register an FIR against the illegal miners and contractors.
“ I wish this action was taken by the Fisheries Deptt earlier more than 2 years back. It was only after I moved to NGT and personally took up the matter with Director J&K Fisheries Deptt , he sent his team to the site at Sail Beerwah. The Department is also responsible for the destruction of this beautiful river which had a huge trout fish population many years back but that has perished now. The action taken should be sustainable and not cosmetic. The Fisheries Deptt must make sure no JCB or L&T machine is used in mining which violates all the laws including Minor Mineral Concession Rules 2016 “ said Dr Raja Muzaffar bhat
The Principal Bench headed by Justice Prakash Srivastava in its order directed for the constitution of a committee that will look into the facts and submit the report in eight weeks. The committee members include Member Secretary Central Pollution Control Board-CPCB New Delhi , representative from the Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change-MoEFCC , Jammu and Kashmir Pollution Control Committee and Director Fisheries JK Govt. “The Member Secretary J&K Pollution Control Committee will act as Nodal Agency in this case” reads the order
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