Court Asks Govt To Comply With Supreme Court Guidelines While Allowing Gravel Mining Jaipur: The Jaipur bench of the Rajasthan High Court on Tuesday gave conditional sanction to sand mining from Banas river. The court asked the state government to comply with the Supreme Court guidelines while allowing mining of sand from the river. A division bench comprising Chief Justice Arun Mishra and NK Jain delivered the verdict in a petition filed by one Ram Dayal. The order, paving way for resumption of mining, will be a respite to the state government and the realtors as major construction work including those of Jaipur Metro had come to a halt. Senior advocate Kamlakar Sharma, assisting the division bench said: “Our prayer before the court was to regulate such mining and to ask the government to provide for rules as directed by the Supreme Court, putting an end to the mafia rule in the field of mining in river basins in the state. The court, however, had placed a blanket ban on any mining in Banas river and other river basins. Today the order has been modified to which we have not objected. However,the government will now be mandatorily required to regulate sand gravel mining in the state.” Assistant advocate general Dinesh Yadav said: “Presently there are no mining leases granted by the state government and only a royalty collection contract is being done to excavate sand gravel from the river bed in Banas and other rivers. This has resulted in several consequences. The state government has already constituted a committee to follow the guidelines issued by the apex court in the case of one Deepak Kumar. The committee will examine how far those guidelines can be effectuated in the state and what modifications are required,” said. Yadav said that the main purpose is to see that no mining lease is granted below a five hectare area, the time of the lease should be for a period of 5 years and that there should be no mining and excavation of sand gravel from the sea bed beneath 3 metre depth. Still the last cut off date fixed to frame rules by all the states by the Supreme Court is August 27, as such the state government has time for the same. Earlier on February 27, a division bench of the Supreme Court in its order in the Deepak Kumar case had stated that river beds need to be protected against illegal mining and that rules need to be framed to regulate mining. It was also made mandatory that all licenses to excavate soft sand from river basins should be given only after a due permission is obtained from ministry of environment and forests. The Supreme Court had on Monday asked the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) to consult Union ministry of environment and forests to seek clearance for sand mining. The JDA had filed a petition in the SC seeking vacation of the Rajasthan High Court order banning sand mining from Banas river. Court notice to govt on Deen Dayal land allotment case Jaipur: The Rajasthan High Court on Tuesday issued notices to the state government and a private party on a petition demanding quashing of a police complaint against assistant commissioner, Devasthanm, Vasudev Sharma in the infamous Deen Dayal Upadhyay Memorial Trust land allotment case. Justice RS Rathore issued the notice on the petition filed by Sharma, who has been accused of misplacing an important file relating to alleged illegal allotment of a prime land in Jaipur to the Trust. Sharma told the high court that two separate investigation reports by the police have giving contradictory findings about the missing file. One of these reports allegedly holds Sharma responsible for misplacing the file, while the other report points a finger at the involvement of senior IAS officers. TNN