Supreme Court widens the sand-mining case and warns Rajasthan of a blanket ban

The Supreme Court on Tuesday told the Central Empowered Committee to report on riverbed sand mining across the country, and warned Rajasthan that a blanket ban would follow if the state did not show, within two weeks, that it could stop the trade. Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta were hearing a suo motu case opened this year after reports of illegal mining in the National Chambal Gharial Sanctuary, together with a petition on the Ken River in Panna district of Madhya Pradesh.

"Sand mining from river beds has a disastrous effect," the bench said. "The river flow gets affected and the worst effect is on the river ecosystem." Later it put the same point in remedial terms: "Nature takes care of itself but when you put obstacles, it becomes a problem. Ultimately, rivers will be destroyed, and once destroyed, they cannot be compensated." The matter returns on 4 November.

The Chambal sanctuary, notified in 1978, runs through Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. It holds the largest wild population of gharials. Nesting on this stretch accounts for an estimated 80 to 90 percent of the global wild population of a species listed as critically endangered. Inside the boundary the court was given village counts of 173 in Madhya Pradesh, 260 in Rajasthan and 130 in Uttar Pradesh. Mining has continued after orders passed in May and on 22 July. The CEC, a statutory body since 2023 and before that a court-created committee dating to 2002, has flagged pits in the banks, missing surveillance, vacant forest posts, and no legal protection for field staff comparable to the cover given in Odisha and Assam.

Last month forest ranger Pratap Singh Chundawat was crushed to death by a dumper carrying illegally mined sand. The bench used that death to press the states on gangs rather than on individual trucks. It said Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh had failed to identify the organised groups behind the extraction. It told the three states to increase surveillance, map illegal routes, protect frontline staff, and consider preventive detention against the kingpins. "We will not tolerate such a lacklustre response by the states," the judges said. "Our orders were very clear. Yet, we are told by the amicus that they have hardly been respected or followed."

Senior advocate Nikhil Goel, assisting as amicus, asked the court to widen the case beyond the Chambal. The bench agreed, and directed the CEC to report on river sand mining in the country, not only inside the sanctuary. A separate plea listed with the suo motu case says huge excavators and sand-pulling pumps have been installed in the Ken at Panna even though Madhya Pradesh has no current government contract for sand mining there. The court has asked the state to explain how the machines are on the river.

Rajasthan has been here before. The court recorded that the state imposed a total ban on sand mining between 2018 and 2021. The ban did not end the trade. It moved it. The bench told the state it would not "allow the rivers of the state to be destroyed in this manner", and that a fresh blanket ban was available if the affidavit due in two weeks did not show a change. Compliance affidavits are also due from Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh on the May and July directions.

The practical problem is that legal sand and illegal sand leave the river in the same trucks. A lease, where one exists, sets a volume and a season. Around the Chambal, the CEC's earlier notes say the volume on the banks does not match the leases, and that inter-state movement makes a single district's enforcement file useless. A dumper loaded in one state can be in another before a range office opens. That is why the court has asked for route mapping and for district-level accountability that crosses the state line. It is also why a report from the CEC, which already sits over forest and environment compliance for the court, is more useful than another state status note.

Two weeks is a short clock for a trade that has outlasted a three-year ban. The test on 4 November is narrower than a national policy. It is whether Rajasthan can name the gangs, whether Madhya Pradesh can explain the Ken machines, and whether the CEC's pan-India note gives the bench a place to start outside the sanctuary. The gharial number is the reason the case began. The court's own sentence on Tuesday is the reason it no longer stops at the sanctuary boundary: a river, once destroyed, cannot be compensated.