Two satellite images, eight months apart, showed a wall of stones across the river inside the sand lease
Sheo Kumar Singh and Sudhir Kumar Chaturvedi disposed of a letter petition from a sarpanch on compliance reports, directing periodic monitoring of plantation and strict adherence to the sand mining guidelines.
Two satellite images of the same stretch of the Khari river, taken eight months apart in 2022, told the joint committee most of what it needed to know. In February the river bed was clear. By October a wall of large stones ran across it, inside the sand mining lease, built without anybody's approval — and, the committee thought, probably built to stop sand washing downstream so that more of it would settle where it could be dug out and sold. The National Green Tribunal has disposed of the case after the State reported the site compliant, but with three directions that keep the obligations alive.
What happened
The case began as a letter petition from Neeraj Choudhary, the Sarpanch of Gram Panchayat Gulgaon in Panchayat Samiti Sawar, Kekri district. He alleged that sand mining was being carried on beyond the permitted lease area using JCB machines in the river bed, and that mining outside the lease was leaving deep pits.
The lease is not small. Environmental clearance covers 1,025.70 hectares of bajri extraction from the Khari river across revenue villages of Tehsil Kekri, before the river joins the Banas near Chosala village. Mining lease No. 05/2013 was granted to the project proponent, and after a period in which leases were cancelled and then reinstated by a letter of 14 October 2022, it became effective again for the balance four years and one month. A later amendment raised the permissible mining depth from one metre to three without increasing the leased area.
The Tribunal constituted a joint committee, which visited on 3 January 2025. Its findings are specific.
There was no flow of water in the river bed at the sites visited near Gulgaon and Devmand, and water-filled pockets stood in the bed where mining had been done in many places. No boundary pillars marked the lease, as the Rajasthan Minor Mineral Concession Rules, 2017 require — the explanation offered being that the lease spans various khasra numbers and pillars would be difficult to place, though demarcation charges of ₹20,000 had been paid in 2013 and ₹50,000 in March 2023, and a demarcation report had been furnished. A JCB was working in the lease area during the visit, confirmed against the live location and the lease boundary file. The committee measured the pits with a tape: about 1.5 metres below the adjacent river bed, and in places 2.3 metres.
Some of what it found was in order. A weighbridge on the river bank issues royalty receipts linked to the State mining department's online management portal; CCTV cameras cover the weighbridges; vehicles carry GPS. Three licensed stock points at Gulgaon, Devkheri and Devpura hold the mined sand, with e-transit passes issued through the same online server. A replenishment study had been carried out by a qualified geologist for pre-monsoon and post-monsoon 2023-24 and filed with the department in May 2024. The department had itself acted against twenty-two cases of illegal storage and transportation in 2023-24 and thirteen more in the following year to December 2024.
The stock points had their own history. A drone survey of all three, carried out by the mining department on 9 February 2024 on a complaint from the village panchayat, found irregularities in the stocks held — 2,910.524 tonnes in total — and the department imposed a penalty of ₹13,09,735.80 on the proponent by a letter of 20 February 2024. At the committee's visit, Gulgaon and Devpura were operational and Devkheri was not, holding 4,839.05, 23,317.08 and 675.75 tonnes respectively. The committee randomly checked the quantity being dispatched against the transit passes generated at the transfer point and against the carrying capacity registered with the transport department, and found it in order.
The enforcement figures are worth recording because they show the scale of what the department was already dealing with in this one tehsil. Against the twenty-two cases of illegal storage and transportation in 2023-24 it recovered ₹34,15,400, of which ₹26,00,000 was environmental compensation; against the thirteen cases to December 2024 it recovered ₹23,24,950, including ₹18,00,000 of such charges.
On the complaint about the number of vehicles, the mining plan allowed twelve excavators and twelve front-end loaders. The proponent had eight excavators across its sites, and at the time of the visit one was working in the river bed near Gulgaon with a tractor-trolley carrying material to the transfer point, while five truck trailers were running from the transfer points to various cities.
What the committee found wrong
Two findings stand out, and both are about rules that exist for the river rather than for the paperwork.
The first is the obstruction. Near the Gulgaon weighbridge, large stones had been stacked across the river bed inside the lease area without approval from any department, almost blocking the natural flow of the river. The committee compared Google Earth imagery: the image of 21 February 2022 shows no obstruction, and the image of 11 October 2022 shows the river clearly blocked with large stones. Its inference was that this had probably been done to stop the sand and bajri flowing on, so that more would be deposited within the permitted lease. The Enforcement and Monitoring Guidelines for Sand Mining, 2020 require all precautions to be taken so that the water stream flows unhindered and the natural meandering of the river is not affected by mining. Obstructing the flow also breaches condition 21 of the consent to operate. The mining department at Sawar issued the proponent a notice on 8 January 2025, five days after the committee's visit, calling for a reply within thirty days.
The second is the greenbelt, and it is a conflict between two documents the same project is held to. The environmental clearance, as amended, requires the greenbelt to be developed within the first five years at a density of about 2,500 saplings per hectare. The consent to operate requires plantation across one-third of the lease area. Those are not the same obligation, and on a lease of 1,025.70 hectares the difference is very large. Plantation had been done on 3.15 hectares in 2023-24. The committee's recommendation was that the consent condition, being out of line with the clearance, should be amended by the State pollution control board and complied with accordingly.
What the Tribunal did
By the time the matter came to be decided, the position on the ground had moved. The observations of the joint committee on river bed mining regulations, the replenishment study, stock management and maintenance of river flow had been taken into account, and remedial measures had been taken by the State authorities. The State pollution control board inspected the lease on 31 December 2025 and again on 11 February 2026 and reported on 10 March 2026 that it was fully compliant, with no violation reported.
On those compliance reports the Tribunal recorded that no violation is presently found, that the proponent holds a valid environmental clearance and valid consents to establish and to operate, and that no further action is therefore required of it.
It did not leave the matter there. In the interest of environmental norms it issued three directions. The orders of the Supreme Court in the special leave petition of 2019 concerning bajri leases, made in the light of the Centrally Empowered Committee's report, and the order of the Rajasthan High Court at Jaipur in a criminal miscellaneous petition of 2020, must be strictly observed. The Sustainable Sand Mining Management Guidelines, 2016 and the Enforcement and Monitoring Guidelines for Sand Mining, 2020 must be fully complied with. And the State pollution control board is to monitor the plantation within the mining area and the survival of what is planted on a periodic basis, taking remedial measures in accordance with the rules where it finds deficiency or non-compliance, so that the plantation required by the specific conditions of the environmental clearance is completed and properly maintained.
Outcome
Original Application No. 74 of 2026, which began life before the Principal Bench as an application of 2024, was disposed of with those observations, along with any pending interlocutory applications. No penalty was imposed and no compensation directed, the State having reported the site compliant before the order was made.
The practical content of the order is the monitoring obligation it leaves on the State pollution control board, and the fact that the mismatch between the plantation condition in the clearance and the plantation condition in the consent is now on the record.