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PUNE: The state government will use drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with advanced cameras to identify the illegal sand mining hotspots, following the Centre’s directives.

A state government official said using the drones would help keep a track on the sand mafia as well as calculate the sand used for infrastructure projects. “We had tried the drones on a pilot-basis for some districts and would replicate it now in other parts,” a senior state government official, working in the sand mining department, said.

It was only recently that the state, with its huge number of infrastructure projects, had put an order to use artificial sand to address the sand requirement in the state. “Such directives had been issued earlier as well. But, the present one has called for detailed guidelines to form teams that would involve both police and traffic police, which would be good to curtail any illegal activities,” the official said.

The state government said illegal sand mining was much lesser in Maharashtra as compared to the other states. But, cases of illegal sand dredging, especially along creeks, were on the rise.

In a first, states were also directed to quantify future demands for sand over the next five years, based on a market survey to compare demand and supply (factoring in illegal sand extraction). This needed to be done under the mining plan for each district.

The ministry of environment, forests and climate change stated the guidelines were based on various court orders. The Supreme Court in July 2019 pulled up the Centre for not being able to curtail illegal sand mining across Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

A state official said along with physical surveys, the advent of advanced technology in the form of drones needed to be used by states to have a topographic overview and provide information accuracy to curb illegal sand mining.

In May 2019, the United Nations Environment Programme had declared India and China as the top two countries where illegal sand mining had become a major environment problem.

Extraction of sand from rivers, coastal marine areas, lakes, reservoirs, agricultural field, among others, lead to pollution, flooding, lowering of water aquifers, beach erosion, destruction of important ecological habitats and frequent droughts, an official said.

