Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Monday said farmers can sell sand which got deposited in their fields along the Sutlej and Beas rivers during last year's floods. Mann stated this on the second day of the budget session in the Punjab assembly after Independent MLA Rana Inder Partap Singh raised the issue. The legislator from Sultanpur Lodhi said that four to five feet of sand got deposited in agriculture fields in some villages of his assembly constituency following floods. The chief minister said the state government will allow farmers to sell up to four feet of sand that got deposited in their fields during the floods last year. "This sand will belong to the landowners and the state government will not charge any tax on it," said Mann, adding that a notification in this regard will be issued soon. Meanwhile, while participating in the discussion on the governor's address, Punjab Cabinet minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal said the AAP government created a "record of development
State-owned lignite producer NLC India on Wednesday said its proposed plant for manufacturing construction-grade sand using mine overburden is expected to begin operations by January-end. The plant is expected to produce civil construction-grade sand from mine overburden -- wastes generated during mining operations. Sand manufactured from mining wastes is important in view of the scarcity of natural sand. "This plant is expected to produce civil construction Grade M-sand of 2.62 lakh cubic metre per year from mine overburden...The plant is expected to be operationalised by end of January 2024," the public sector enterprise said in a stock exchange filing. Similar and high capacity plants will be installed in other mines of Neyveli (Tamil Nadu) in due course, the company said. "Bhoomi Puja for the proposed OB to M-Sand Plant at Mine-IA, Neyveli was performed on December 12," it said. Company's CMD Prasanna Kumar Motupalli said that the contract has already been awarded for executi
With flooding of major rivers extending the shortage, the price of a truck-load of sand (10-12 tonnes) has risen to over Rs 50,000 in the black market
Sand and gravel are now the most-extracted materials in the world