The Union Minister of Mines, Narendra Singh Tomar, launched the Sand Mining Framework at the third National Conclave on Mines and Minerals in New Delhi on March 20, 2018. It was launched to help states deal with the sand mining issues such as demand supply deficit and illegal extraction. Now, the states can arrive at possible options before them. Also, it seeks to address issues of state objectives, demand-supply assessment and measures to sand availability, allocation model, transportation and monitoring mechanism. Besides it includes suggestions for faster clearances, approvals and using its interventions in complete process chain of sand mining. It also emphasised on alternatives of sand, i.e., manufactured sand, import of sand, etc.
The framework was required as sand is an important component for housing, infrastructure projects and construction activities. Also, there are many other issues related to sand like non-availability of sand, environmental degradation, high sand prices, illegalities in sand mining, etc.
Regarding sand mining, the government also amended the Mineral Auction Rules 2015 in November 2017 to make the auction process easy and help states auction mineral blocks quickly. The portal ‘Pradhan Mantri Khanij Kshetra Kalyan Yojana’ was launched for monitoring the registration and returns module of Phase I of the Mining Tenement System (MTS). [MTS basically involves automating the entire mineral concession life-cycle, starting from identification of area and ending with closure of the mine; and connecting the various stakeholders for real-time transfer of electronic files and exchange of data.]