First, the court-appointed commissioners were browbeaten to stop them from investigating illegal mining. Then, villagers were gagged from speaking up. When these tactics failed, bribes were offered to water down the findings.
These were the lengths to which officials in Bageshwar, a Himalayan town in Uttarakhand, went to stifle a probe into illegal soapstone mining that was wreaking havoc on the region. The mining had destabilised the land, cracked homes, and raised fears of a disaster similar to Joshimath, where the ground is slowly sinking.
The commissioners’ report, which led the high court to ban mining in the region, is now being published in full by The Collective. It exposes how state officials actively enabled rampant violations by mining companies. Mining permits were granted without considering the long-term environmental risks, and mining plans existed only on paper. Safeguards to prevent land subsidence and landslides were entirely absent.
The report accuses the District Mining Officer of giving miners a free hand and revenue officials of obscuring the extent of forest land encroached upon by miners. It also charges the environment body tasked with regulating mining with working “tacitly against its mandate” to monitor and prevent environmental damage.
The commissioners uncovered more: funds from the District Mineral Foundation—meant to help mining-affected communities—were instead diverted to spruce up government offices. The state machinery, the report says, was complicit at every level in protecting violators and fostering a deficient mining policy.
Click here to read the full report, exposing how negligence and corruption have left the fragile Himalayan ecosystem on the brink of disaster.