New Delhi: Uttarakhand officials actively facilitated rampant environmental violations by soapstone miners in the Himalayan town of Bageshwar and attempted to obstruct an investigation into the environmental damage that followed, according to a report commissioned by the state high court.

In September 2024, Bageshwar district was alarmed as cracks developed in agricultural fields, ceilings and walls of houses in a dozen villages, threatening a repeat of Joshimath – a town that has been slowly sinking into the ground.

Bageshwar villagers had blamed the unabated illegal soapstone mining that hollowed out the hills in the area for the crisis, forcing the high court to appoint two court commissioners in December 2024 to visit the district and file a report on destruction caused by mining in the area.

The Reporters’ Collective is now publishing in full the court commissioners’ report based on which the high court in the first week of January ordered a ban on soapstone mining citing a state of “complete lawlessness”.

The report found the state machinery of being “complicit” in giving mining permits without considering long-term impacts, and fostering a deficient mining policy that allows over-exploitation and environmental damage due to unscientific mining.

The report charges district officials with making multiple attempts to thwart the inquiry, interference, and stonewalling requests for details about land encroached upon for illegal mining. The sub-divisional magistrate of Kanda in Bageshwar even gagged villagers from talking to the court-appointed commissioners. And the commissioners reported that they were offered bribes to water down their findings.

We sent detailed queries to Uttarakhand state departments regarding the concerns raised in the commissioners’ report. We haven’t received a reply yet.

The report’s findings are in line with The Collective’s earlier exposé of the Uttarakhand government’s illegal river mining in violation of a Supreme Court order and environment rules. The state’s Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami lobbied with the Union government to permit river mining in the ecologically fragile state despite environment violations.

News Flash from Uttarakhand High Court: State officials defied the high court ban on soapstone mining and allowed transport of mined material. These violations happened even after the Director of the Geology and Mining Department had ordered his sub-ordinates to follow the court's ban. Three days after the ban, the court passed another order asking the police to inspect the mines and seize any machinery found.

Keep reading the story on court commissioners' report on state complicity in illegal mining in Bageshwar.

The Probe

Residents of Bageshwar had been raising alarm against indiscriminate soapstone mining in the ecologically fragile Himalayan district but the crisis got widespread attention after cracks began appearing in the land and houses.

Uttarakhand is a storehouse of soapstone, a kind of rock rich in talc that is used as an ingredient in cosmetics, ceramics, paints and other construction material. The commissioners’ report pointed out problems with how soapstone was being mined in Bageshwar illegally.

Miners were using heavy earth-moving machines illegally for excavating the area, and were mining beyond permitted hours. It has destroyed the water channels in the area, leading to water scarcity and pollution.

The report found that the lower parts of the slopes were being mined excessively, making the slopes unstable and prone to collapse. This instability, known as “slope failure,” causes the land to gradually sink, a process called land subsidence. As the land sinks, it creates cracks in buildings and structures above it, posing serious risks.

There were no measures in place to prevent this land subsidence and landslides. The green belt areas, which consist of trees and vegetation, were completely missing. These belts are crucial for holding the soil with their roots and preventing land subsidence. There were also no retaining walls at the bottom of the slopes to hold them steady.

They also found that the excavation of soapstone—drilling, blasting and crushing of mined material—and its transportation was causing sound and air pollution. The villagers in the area told the commissioners that their children were in distress as they could not sleep at night due to the continuous noise of blasting the earth. While digging, the top layers of soil and rock were also being illegally dumped in village panchayat lands without permission or fear of penalty.

The court commissioners said the sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) of Kanda district interfered in their conversation with villagers who had gathered to complain about the adverse effects of mining on their health and livelihoods. They were threatened by the district officials to not reveal the violations.

Not just environmental laws, labour laws too, were violated with impunity. Miners had employed many children in the dangerous job of creeping into the small cracks to extract soapstone. These were mostly children of migrants from Nepal, and were also not paid minimum wages and had to live in inhuman conditions.

The authorities responsible for ensuring that environment, mining and labour laws were followed had failed to do their job and gave the miners a free pass, the report said.

“Complicit State Machinery”

The State Environment Impact Assessment Authority was working “tacitly against its mandate” to monitor mining activities and prevent environment damage. Sample this: While it had given permission to over 300 projects that had the potential to impact the environment, it put out in public the details of the clearance only for 59 projects, the report said.

The report said the authority had become a “mute spectator” of environmental degradation and was hiding from public scrutiny.

And the department of revenue, the custodian of land details, was accused of deliberately obscuring the extent of forest land encroachment by miners.

Key maps demarcating revenue and forest lands were withheld from commissioners, who said that the absence of such data made it nearly impossible to monitor illegal encroachments.

Commissioners accused revenue officials of “hiding the scale” of illegal mining and alleged a deliberate effort to shield violators. 

Mining plans, the commissioners said, existed only on paper. They alleged that the district mining officer had effectively given miners free rein, allowing them to dump debris into rivers while flouting labour, environmental, and pollution control norms. They went further, claiming that district officials were “hand in glove with the miners”.

The understaffed forest department was incapable of checking encroachment by miners, the report said.

Misuse of District Mineral Foundation Fund

The study also found evidence that money was diverted from the District Mineral Foundation – the largest pool of money available to help people living in mining areas.

The commissioners found that Rs 33,82,000 from the fund was used to renovate and beautify the office of the former chairman of the foundation, who was also the then district magistrate (DM) of Bageshwar. Additionally, another former DM spent Rs 18 lakh on renovating her office and the office of the SDM Kapkote.

The report has recommended disciplinary action against officials who misused the funds and suggested that the DMF fund, which hasn’t been scrutinised for four years, be audited.

On the basis of the unsettling report, the high court banned mining and ordered that the miners and state government officials concerned be made respondents in the case.

Recommendations

The court-appointed commissioners have made several recommendations: a thorough review of the mining policy to plug loopholes, deploy officials to keep a check on mining, and transfer officials who have stretched their stay in the area.

They also recommended that environment department officials be directed to disclose information on clearances given to environmentally damaging projects, and to take action against mines that have violated terms of these clearances.

The commissioners also recommended setting up Pollution Control Board offices, in every sub-division of the state, including Bageshwar, and that they proactively take up cases concerning environment pollution.