Why open auction of river blocks

Unless there were any cogent reasons for conducting open auction of blocks in rivers, streams, nallahs etc by the Geology and Mining Department, in flagrant violation of standing Government orders, why should otherwise motives not be attributed to those who took such decisions even at the cost of disregarding the court directives. Conducting of e-tenders and e-auction in all the Government departments is to pre-empt and ward off any elements of speculations and ambiguities of various types leading to suspicion of corrupt practices with an eye on illegal pecuniary gains having been resorted to wilfully.
Why should, on account of violations of standing procedures and rules, Government lose its revenue rightfully due to it and why should the same not be recovered from those who took such decisions knowingly on their own? In the instant case, for example, the Government has lost huge revenue in terms of royalty from the rivers and nallahas since open auction discouraged many participants in almost the entire region, speculations are rife that only a “selected” group in complete connivance of and patronage from some insiders from the department “managed” the entire process of auction. In fact, the material auctioned was what we call “grey gold”.
It is this “grey gold” mafia which gets undue patronage from the Department concerned to manage take complete control of extraction of ‘minor mineral’ like sand, stones, gravel etc in the rivers and streams of the region. We urge the Government that an inquiry be instituted to expose, name and shame all those involved in this loot right up to some politicians and bureaucrats who too are part of the nexus.

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