JAIPUR: Manipulation in heights of the hills in Aravalli range and violation of the guidelines, appears to be the modus operandi followed by officials to lease out rights for illegal mining. This has become clear in a recent case where officials of mining, forest and other related departments are currently in police custody in Udaipur, for giving leases for mining in areas where it is prohibited.Seven officials being investigated is one of the major cases with respect to illegal mining, claims state’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB).The bail appeal of all the accused was rejected, the order for which came on Tuesday. This case has brought to light the method used by the officials to issue mining licenses in prohibited areas. According to the SC’s guidelines, any hillock over 100 metres in height along the designated stretch is part of Aravalli Ranges and no mining can be done there. When issuing licenses, officials study the contour maps of Geological Survey of India, for a particular stretch. The average of the base and highest contours is taken, which must be within 100 metres for mining to be authorised there.ACB officials claim that this is where some of the officials, who are hand-in-glove with the mining mafia, manipulate the guidelines as well as the data. Speaking about the recent case, Ganesh Shanker Tiwari, assistant director prosecution, ACB-Udaipur told TOI, “Two leases for mining were issued in Udaipur in which the base height of the contour to be taken was 240 metres and highest was 482 metres which would have clearly not been within the 100-metre limit. The officers acted smart and took the base contour as 400 metres and took the average of this with 482 metres. Based on this wrong data, they issued the licenses.”Another violation in this case was that lease was issued for mining in 2.8 hectares of reserved forest land which is prohibited.While this is apparently the first major case of illegal mining in which officials of concerned departments are allegedly involved, Tiwari says that similar methods are probably being used by others as well. “Manipulation of data and reports is one of the ways for issuing licenses for illegal mining. Such employees are trying to make a fool of the system. In fact, these seven claimed that they physically measured the hillocks with an altimeter before giving the leases, when this instrument is not used for checking heights of hills,” he said.

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