Chandigarh: The Punjab government today said it will come out with a new mining policy aimed at plugging revenue leakage. "The main objective of the new mining policy will be to plug the revenue loss caused to the state exchequer," Local Government Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu said. 

He presided over a meeting of the cabinet sub-committee on mining which was also attended by private stakeholders. The other members of the committee are Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal and Rural Development and Panchayat Minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa, who were also present.  

Sidhu, after giving a hearing to all the concerned stakeholders, said that while framing the new policy all the suggestions put forward by them would be given due consideration. He further elaborated that this new policy would be in accordance with the sand mining framework issued by the Ministry of Mines, Government of India in March 2018.  

The minister also added that before giving final touches to the policy, he would personally meet the officers of the ministry of mines on Monday and the cabinet sub-committee would again meet on Tuesday. Sidhu further said that the chief minister had sought a report within one month from the sub-committee. He also made it clear that the government would have the right to fix the prices of sand.  

While quoting the mining policies of various states, Sidhu said Telangana came into existence in 2014 and at that time it had a meagre Rs 10 crore income from mining but the state government formed a mining corporation which saw the income increasing to Rs 374 crore in 2015-16, Rs 419 crore in 2016-17 and now in 2017-18 to Rs 1,200 crore.  

Similarly, Haryana, which is smaller than Punjab in size, is minting Rs 900 crore from mining. Sidhu instructed the officials of the department to brace up for the effective implementation of the proposed mining policy. He said there would be provision of e-transport permit and by scanning the bar-coded permit, information like volume, origin point, destination would be displayed.  

The minister reiterated that it would be ensured in the new policy that no overloaded truck/tipper crosses the roads which would put a stop to the damage being caused to the roads.  

After the meeting, the sub-committee held another meeting with the contractors and crusher owners associated with mining and ascertained their views as well as suggestions. PTI