Awantipora : Despite state governments ban on sand extraction from rivers here illegal sand extraction is going unabated in Awantipora Teshsil in Pulwama district.
“In Padgampora and Awantipora area of south Kashmir’s Pulwama district, sand extraction is being done on daily basis by sand mafia,” sources said.
According to sources in the district administration the orders are being violated brazenly and the administration remains ‘unmoved’.
The residents living around the rivers accuse officials of being hand in glove for letting the ‘sand mafia wreck havoc which damages agricultural land and the river embankments’.
Locals wishing not to be named, fearing reprisal from sand mafia told INS that the ‘its unlikely that authorities don’t know about the illegal sand extraction as it is not being done in the dead of night but during broad day light’.
Assistant Executive Engineer Flood control department, Jalal Ud Din, claimed that the district administration has taken ‘cognizance of the matter’.
“A team has been deputed to look into the matter and bring halt to the extraction process,” he said.
Promising action he said that ‘from now on department will neither allow sand extraction from the river’.
(File picture used for representational purposes only)
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