Rekha Gupta urges UP CM to put check on illegal sand mining in Yamuna floodplains

New Delhi: Chief Minister Rekha Gupta wrote to her Uttar Pradesh counterpart Yogi Adityanath on Monday, urging him to stop illegal sand mining on the Yamuna floodplains on the Delhi-UP border while noting that it was weakening the river embankments and raising the danger of flood.

It was also becoming a cause of serious ecological damage, she wrote in the letter.

Gupta also shared with Adityanath the National Green Tribunal’s concerns over the issue, saying it has also sought the stoppage of illegal sand mining through a regulatory enforcement involving inter-state coordination.

Sharing details of illegal sand mining in the Yamuna floodplains, the Delhi chief minister said that it can be a cause of a serious problem and impact the lives of people residing along the banks of the river.

Illegal sand mining is an inter-state issue, the Delhi chief minister said in the letter and emphasised framing a joint and coordinated enforcement system involving Uttar Pradesh and Delhi to check it.

She hoped that with the cooperation of her Uttar Pradesh counterpart, an effective solution to the problem could be found.

An official statement said, “The Delhi chief minister urged Yogi Adityanath to direct Uttar Pradesh officials to carry out a joint inter-state demarcation so that ecological balance could be effectively safeguarded through coordinated efforts of the two states.”

Top officials of the Delhi government said they were in touch with their Uttar Pradesh counterparts and providing all required information, including on illegal sand mining on the Delhi-UP

border, it said.

Illegal sand mining was also causing a diversion of the natural course of the river and changes in its riverbed, officials said, adding it was causing irreversible ecological damage and posing a threat to life and property of those settled

along the Yamuna.

They also raised the situation of “confusion” between Delhi and Uttar Pradesh over jurisdictional matters, according to the statement.