IANS

New Delhi, Oct 9: The Supreme Court Thursday agreed to allow mining of building materials in 600 hectares of the Aravali ranges in Haryana, if the state government sets up a fool-proof mechanism to recuperate land degraded by the activity.

A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justice Aftab Alam gave the in-principle approval for mining, within 600 hectare in Faridabad, while granting the state government six months to establish the recovery mechanism.

The bench, on May 8 this year, ordered suspension of all mining activities, that of building materials, known as minor mining, and of traditional minerals, known as major mining, in 448 square km or 1,500 hectares of Aravalli in Faridabad, Gurgaon and Mewat districts.

The bench had imposed the ban saying that it will not be removed unless a mechanism for recuperating the entire 1,500 hectares is put in place, jointly by the state government and the union ministry of environment and forests, with approval from an apex court appointed monitoring committee.

The court held that it would consider allowing mining of building materials from Faridabad's 600 hectares after May-June summer vacation of the court.

The court Thursday said the state government will have to frame "transparent rules and regulation for giving the mining fields on lease to various bidders". The rules have to be framed within a span of 90 days.

The court also ordered setting up of a rehabilitation fund to finance various recuperating activities for the degraded land. The court said the corpus for the fund would be 10 percent of highest bidders' sum who win the auction for mining in various pockets.

The bench entrusted the charge of setting up the mechanisms to Haryana chief secretary and principal secretary of the state mining department.