- Himachal Pradesh is contemplating a dredging and river-training policy to control floods in the state and has sought environmental exemptions from the centre for it.
- However, experience from its neighbouring state Uttarakhand shows that blanket exemptions and relaxations under such a policy may facilitate illegal and rampant mining, contributing to the worsening of disasters.
- Instead, hill states need a case-by-case, scientific approach towards the dredging of their rivers and a holistic and multidisciplinary policy with involvement of local communities to control floods, experts say.
On August 2, Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, the Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, met with Union Minister of Environment Bhupender Singh Yadav. He sought two relaxations in the current environmental laws so that the state can take action without having to approach the Centre. First, for the state government to be able to release forest land for the rehabilitation of those displaced by floods, and second, to be able to dredge and dispose of the dredged material for disaster prevention.
According to the Indian Forest (Conservation) Act, for the diversion of forest land for any use, a state government must approach the central forest clearance system. Himachal Pradesh has 68% of its land demarcated as forests, which means additional time to initiate community welfare and small-scale infrastructure development and rehabilitation projects in the state. The exemption from forest clearance may make flood rehabilitation work faster, Sukhu proposed.
The second request needs to be viewed in the context of examples from the neighbouring state, Uttarakhand, where the dredging/river training policy has reportedly opened floodgates for rampant and illegal mining, according to several past investigations and media reports.
Following the footsteps of the neighbour
‘Monsoon fury’ is a term often used to describe the year-on-year floods and consequent damage in the hill states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. However, mass-scale construction, road widening projects, and indiscriminate mining — often without regard for the socio-ecological balance of the hills — have been highlighted as factors exacerbating natural disasters in these hilly states.
Infrastructural development relies on a perpetually rising need for the extraction of sand, stones, and gravel. This has led the hill states to continue amending rules to excavate more from their riverbeds. Take the case of Uttarakhand.
In 2020, the state of Uttarakhand increased the depth for riverbed mining from 1.5 metres to three metres. The state government justified the decision by referring to the 2016 and 2020 guidelines for sustainable sand mining, as well as their monitoring and management by the Centre. The guidelines prescribed that mining depth should be restricted to three metres. “But that was the maximum depth allowed. A case-by-case approach could have been applied while allowing mining in riverbeds. Anyhow, in the mountain terrain of Uttarakhand, the central guidelines should be applied with caution. A credible district survey report (DSR) and replenishment study must be the basis of any such exercise,” said Bhim Singh Rawat, Associate Coordinator at South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), an informal network that works on issues related to rivers, communities, and large-scale water infrastructure like dams.
The DSR is a detailed document that assesses the mineral potential of a district. It provides data on the availability and distribution of sand and other minor minerals, suggests extraction limits and depths, and recommends sustainable mining practices. A replenishment study determines the annual rate at which sediments, including sand and gravel, are replaced naturally in a riverbed.
Following in Uttarakhand’s footsteps, in February 2024, the Himachal Pradesh Mineral Policy was introduced to regulate mining, and it increased the permitted depth of riverbed mining from one metre to two metres. Soon after, the state cabinet decided to amend the minor minerals concession rules, and the final amendment was implemented in October 2024. The changes included making private lands available for mining, the use of machinery to excavate minor minerals from riverbeds, and an increase in the depth of riverbed mining to two metres, among other things.
The government of Himachal Pradesh has been contemplating a dredging or river training policy to avert disasters during the monsoon months. The mining, public works, and the Jal Shakti departments of the state have unanimously arrived at the inference that deposition of sediment and ban on mining in Beas and other rivers of the state have overfilled the rivers, shrunken the riverbeds and is contributing to floods in the state.
It may be true to some extent, but it is also worth noting that debris from four-laning, dam development, and construction projects is often dumped into nearby streams and tributaries, which eventually raises the water level in rivers, causing them to overflow during the monsoon, experts highlighted while speaking with Mongabay India. “Before offering any solutions, probing the sources of sedimentation is important. For instance, the construction of projects such as dams and roads in the headwaters and tributaries, such as Parvati, Sainj, and Malana, has contributed to the flooding of the Beas. Muck from these lands in the main river,” said Sumit Mahar, a documentary filmmaker and researcher with Himdhara, a Himachal Pradesh-based environmental research and action collective.
The thought of formulating a river training policy, too, seems an emulation of its neighbour. River training encompasses a broader set of engineering measures, including dredging, embankments, and spurs, designed to control the river’s flow.
Uttarakhand framed a river training policy in 2016. The policy allows the removal of sediment from the middle of the riverbed. However, it didn’t allow the use of machines and permitted dredging only in the central half of the river.
However, over time, it came to lack any environmental oversight, allowing for the possibility of digging deeper and using machines. How did the state do it? The Indian Disaster Management Act 2005 empowers the district administration to take action to prevent disasters. In its dredging/river training policy, the government of Uttarakhand directed the district administrations to issue tenders for the desilting of rivers using powers under the Central Act. Between 2016 and 2021, it revised its river training policy to incorporate changes, including allowing the use of machinery and giving preference to private contractors for dredging, while also allowing them to use the mined material.
“Effectively, dredging in the garb of disaster prevention became a way to allow unabated mining in riverbeds, and done in an unscientific and unsustainable way, it only contributed to flooding and disasters,” said Rawat.
Legal challenges
The relaxations in the river training policy have met with several legal challenges. In one case in 2022, the Uttarakhand High Court imposed a ban on the use of machines for dredging in rivers.
Following this, the state government prepared certain alterations in the river training policy. In January 2024, an amendment to the river training policy was passed. These included regular monitoring of the dredging area by drones and weekly checks by district mine officers, as well as the submission of a fixed deposit of ₹500,000 as a guarantee against any irregularity in river training by dredging license holders.
Around the same time (in February 2023), the National Green Tribunal (NGT), the green court of India, opined that the ban imposed by the Uttarakhand High Court on mechanical mining “deserves to be modified”. It accepted the state’s argument that ‘mining’ and ‘dredging’ were two different processes, and the Indian environment ministry in 2020 had done away with the need to obtain environmental clearance for dredging and de-silting of rivers. And since dredging cannot be equated with mining, and in Uttarakhand, there is a small window for dredging before the monsoon and limited manpower, the state further argued, and the Tribunal found merit in this.
Moreover, in February 2023, at the request of Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, the central government even bypassed the need for forest clearance to dredge the Gaula, Kosi, Sharda, and Dabka rivers, which fall within forest areas.
While all these cases were being heard in the Uttarakhand High Court and NGT, questions were being raised about riverbed mining. For instance, the NGT in case of ‘dredging’ and excavation of 6000 cubic metres of material from Sharda and Nandhaur rivers of Uttarakhand by the private contractor M/s Shiv Shakti traders, inferred in March 2025, that the extraction of such a large volume of material qualified to be considered as mining (not dredging) and should have required an environmental clearance.
Parineeta Dandekar, Associate Coordinator at the SANDRP, suggested through her blog the adoption of a conservative approach towards dredging for flood control. In her blog, referring to the Vashisthi River in Maharashtra, she recommended minimal dredging with mandatory environmental clearances for flood control.
Policy shifts in Himachal
In the case of Himachal Pradesh, the state has already opened up the rivers to mechanised and deeper mining. Its Mineral Policy 2024 laid the ground for the dredging of rivers. It stated that the mining department will conduct auctions of over-accumulated material based on requests from the district disaster management authorities/revenue authorities to avoid a ‘disaster-like situation.’ In May of this year, the state cabinet permitted the State Forest Development Corporation to conduct dredging in rivers within forest areas and collect minor minerals.
Now, much like Dhami, Himachal Chief Minister Sukhu has requested the Centre to allow the state to carry out dredging in forest areas without the Centre’s permission. If this gets approved, there will be no environmental oversight. In this dredging scheme, the State Forest Development Corporation, district authorities, and the mining department will be involved, with private contractors carrying out the dredging activity. Environmental protection or public interest is not their mandate.
Mahar said, “Private contractors cannot be left to do the dredging work for whom economic viability trumps. Dredging spots are decided based on district survey reports and by scientists or engineers. Here, people should be consulted and involved from planning to monitoring. Representatives of villages and towns located downstream of these dredging spots must be part of consultations and meetings.”
In fact, a recent documentary by Himdhara on the floods in the Sainj River, a tributary of the Beas, which flooded last year, documents the experience of dredging. “In the absence of a dedicated scientific and multidisciplinary approach to dredging, the exercise has been nothing more than a kneejerk response,” said Mahar, who is also the filmmaker of this documentary. Locals allege in the documentary that the contractors merely lifted sediment from the centre of the river and dumped it onto the sides, which, over time, got mixed into the river, increasing the water level again.
The Sand Mining Management Guidelines 2016 also cautioned against dredging as a means to control floods. It said, “..desilting in general is not feasible technically, due to several reasons like non-sustainability, non-availability of vast land required for disposal of dredged material, etc. This cannot be viewed in isolation from other approaches to manage floods.” The Guidelines suggested that de-silting should only be allowed on a case-by-case basis after assessing its viability.
Mahar raised a similar concern. “After all, the dredged material will need to be dumped somewhere. Whether on forest land or private lands (which may require land diversion or acquisition), both will have ecological and socio-economic consequences,” he said.
Himachal Pradesh is already reeling under several cloudbursts, flash floods, and landslides. While in some specific areas of the state, dredging can help prevent floods, experience from Uttarakhand suggests that hill states need a holistic, multidisciplinary approach for the prevention and control of floods, rather than blanket permissions to extract sand, gravel, and stones from their rivers. “Dredging, perhaps, can be carried out at certain critical spots. However, even that needs to be done only after studying the environmental and socio-ecological impacts, as well as the floodplain history of the river basin. Floodplain history, in fact, should be part of all infrastructure decisions being made for the hills,” concluded Mahar.
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Banner image: Dredging activity on the Beas River near Aaloo Ground, Kalath, Kullu district, Himachal Pradesh. Image by Sumit Mahar, Himdhara Collective.
