New Delhi: Once famous for its plywood industry, Haryana’s Yamunanagar has, of late, been in the news for all the wrong reasons. While the plywood industry has shrunk over the years, the district on the banks of Yamuna River has been attracting headlines for alleged illegal mining cases.
From the National Green Tribunal (NGT) imposing penalties on three companies for illegal mining in November 2022 to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arresting Dilbag Singh — arguably the most popular political face in Yamunanagar — in January this year in an illegal mining case, the headlines about Yamunanagar have been dispiriting.
Now, Dilbag Singh is contesting the Haryana assembly election from Yamunanagar as the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) candidate. He is facing off against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) incumbent Ghanshyam Dass Arora and Congress’s Raman Tyagi.
The ED accused Dilbag Singh of being an authorised signatory to a company accused of illegal mining in Yamunanagar’s Pobari village, conducted raids on his properties and arrested him earlier this year. However, the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed the arrest, saying the ED cannot restrain the movements of persons whose premises the agency is searching for money laundering.
In Yamunanagar, Dilbag Singh’s arrest and subsequent release have emerged as a sign of his “power” despite him losing the 2014 and 2019 assembly elections from the district. He last won the Yamunanagar seat in 2009.
This time, Dilbag Singh, a relative of INLD general secretary and de-facto chief Abhay Singh Chautala, was one of the first candidates to be declared by a party. Chautala declared him the face of the party in Yamunanagar in February this year when he was still behind bars amid clouds of uncertainty over his release and party workers in the constituency feeling the weight of the development. Dilbag’s daughter is married to Abhay Chautala’s younger son Arjun Chautala.
But what is this mining industry and how big is it in Haryana? Who are the key players and how much money is involved? ThePrint explains.
‘The multi crore industry, single player’
Mustakeen (50) has been a labourer at the mining site on the Yamuna banks in the Pobari village for years. All he remembers about the business and the site is Dilbag Singh, who is considered to be the largest player in the business in the region.
Mustakeen has not met Dilbag Singh one-on-one but has learnt about him through word of mouth, his co-workers telling him that they have never returned with empty hands from Dilbag’s door.
Dilbag Singh remained the Yamunanagar MLA from 2009 to 2014, but for Mustakeen and thousands of other labourers at the mining site, Dilbag is a mining contractor — the biggest of all. “His decision is final” for all other contractors on the Yamuna banks.
“He always supports labourers who work at the mining site. Several workers who have worked for other contractors have also reached out to him to settle disputes, which he has successfully dealt with,” Mustakeen told ThePrint.
Mustakeen was aware of the recovery of arms from Dilbag Singh’s house when the ED raided it in 2024. But for him and at least a dozen other labourers, this is not an election issue.”
“When you operate a business at such a huge scale, there are likely to be cases related to the business against you. Dilbag Singh’s personality and power are beyond all the cases he could be dealing with,” Mustakeen said.
Yamuna River flows across the Haryana-Uttar Pradesh border, with villages, such as Pobari, divided by the river into two. Pointing towards various mining sites on the ghat (bank) opposite him, Mustakeen said only one of 12 mining sites is currently operational in the Pobari village. The remaining have been closed for two years since the contracts with the state government for operating them expired in 2021.
Sand is a minor mineral under Section 3(e) of the Mines and Minerals (Development & Regulation) (MMDR) Act, 1957, brought in by the central government. Under the law, the power of administration related to mining lies with the state governments.
Increasing urbanisation and subsequent construction booms over the last two decades have tripled the demand for sand in the country, according to a 2019 report published by a senior analyst with the Global Initiative Against Organized Crime, Prem Mahadevan. India, Mahadevan documented, was the world’s third-biggest construction industry in 2019.
Valued at USD 551.1 million last year, the sand market in India is expected to nearly double to USD 908.6 million in 2032, according to the markets research company IMARC Group.
In 2019, Mahadevan further estimated that sand mafias, on average, extracted nearly 500 ferry loads of sand from each of the mining sites in the country. Rampant mining of sand from river banks has adversely affected rivers and coastal regions across the country.
‘Mining picked up after contracts through auction’
On the banks of the Yamuna in Pobari village, the presence of many payloaders and earth-moving machines establishes the magnitude of sand mining, while loosely held raw sand on the riverbed demonstrates the area’s richness in share of minerals. Heavy trucks move in and out of the area where mining is allowed, ferrying minerals extracted from the site, which once spanned 23.05 hectares. Now, the mining site spans a smaller area.
Speaking to ThePrint, Haryana government officials said that legal mining remains restricted to a depth of three metres and three-fourths of the area of riverbeds to ensure the safety of river banks and allow rivers to flow smoothly. With the restrictions in mind, mining companies can demarcate areas and deploy earth-moving machines to dig out sand, boulders, and gravel from just those areas.
In Haryana and, specifically, in Yamunanagar, mining on riverbeds, sometimes flouting the restrictions, picked up pace after the Haryana government introduced contracts through auction in November 2013. In 2019, Mahadevan documented that illegal sand miners made around Rs five lakh of profit daily in just one district.
According to Haryana’s mining and geology department, Yamunanagar has roughly 30 square kilometres of riverbeds, along with nearly 90 square kilometres of area beyond the riverbend, containing mineral deposits. This is because of the Yamuna River and tributaries such as Chautang, Rakshi, Somb, Boll, and Fandi Rao, among others, passing through different parts of the district, said officials.
The labourers at the mining site in the Pobari village and the Haryana mining department officials explained how Dilbag Singh is the “biggest” dealer in the sand mining business.
“He is the ‘dada’ of all the companies and contractors working in Yamunanagar. All proposals and mining plans go through him,” a Haryana government official told ThePrint, requesting anonymity.
Dilbag Singh has four cases against him, his latest election affidavit filed before the Election Commission showed. All the cases were registered this year after the ED raided premises linked to him and his aide in Yamunanagar as a part of the illegal mining case.
According to a survey report, prepared by the Yamunanagar district administration in October 2023, 30.71 million metric tonnes of sand were mined between financial years 2020-21 and 2022-23 while 2.46 million metric tonnes of boulder and gravel were mined during the same period.
A mining official said the Haryana government levies Rs 50 on each tonne of sand mined. The report seen by ThePrint said the state government raked in nearly Rs 500 crore in royalties from sand mining in the Yamunanagar district between 2020 and 2023.
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