Telangana: 2BHK housing scheme fuels illegal sand mining

Hyderabad: The state government’s 2-BHK housing scheme for the poor appeared to be promoting illegal sand mining and turning fertile opportunity for sand mafia.

To speed up construction of 2.7 lakh houses before the elections, the government started special sand reaches on the beds of the Godavari and the Krishna, offering sand for free to contractors. This was done as contractors were not coming forward to participate in tenders claiming that the scheme was unviable.

But with the free offer, the sand mafia in collusion with local politicians and revenue, police and mining officials was exploiting the situation and mining more than permitted quantities. They were said to be illegally diverting the sand to the realty sector in Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts where there was huge demand in the wake of construction activity.

Those trying to control the sand mafia were being threatened and the incident in Kamareddy on Thursday where a government official was mowed down by a tractor when he resisted them brought to the fore how the mafia had spread its tentacles.

Allegations of the inv-olvement of kith and kin of ministers and TRS lea-ders in illegal sand mining, especially in North Telangana districts were rife and no official inqui-ry had been ordered.

The modus operandi of the mafia was to load sand more than the permissible quantity and earn up to Rs 20,000 per trip.

Contractors had to get a weigh bill to procure sa-nd from the reaches. It was found that weigh bi-lls were obtained to tran-sport 10 tonnes of sand in a lorry when the quantity moved out was at least 15 tonnes. There was no monitoring mechanism to prevent overloading.

The sand mafia was said to be transporting an additional 50 tonne of sand on every weigh bill obtained for taking out 100 tonne. This was being sold in the open market for up to Rs 1,600 a tonne.

Though the government introduced online booking for sand aimed at helping people, it was not working in their favour. The system sought the registration number of the lorry which made the common man depend on the sand mafia for any construction activity.