In March this year, I sat in front of my screen feeling a rare sense of relief.

The J&K Assembly was in session and Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Chowdhary, who also heads the Mining Department, announced that a Haryana-based construction company, NKC Projects Pvt. Ltd., had been penalised Rs 80 lakh.

The company had been caught carrying out illegal riverbed mining in the Shaliganga stream in Budgam. For someone like me, who has spent years campaigning against unregulated sand and boulder extraction in Kashmir’s fragile rivers, this sounded like a long-awaited sign that the system was finally working.

The case was serious.

In Khansahib, locals had seen heavy machinery, including L&T cranes and JCBs, ploughing into the Shaliganga without any clearance from the mining, revenue, or forest departments. Their protests went unheard until Saifudin Bhat, the MLA from Khansahib, raised the alarm inside the Assembly.

The Deputy Chief Minister responded with confidence. He told the House that the District Mineral Officer had taken strict action, verified the complaint, and imposed a penalty of Rs 80 lakh for unauthorised extraction of nearly 300 metric tons of river material.

Newspapers across Kashmir and even national outlets like The Economic Times and Business Standard reported the........

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