PIONEER EDGE NEWS SERVICE/ Rudrapur
While expressing his views on mining and tourism sectors in Uttarakhand during a press conference held here, the noted industrialist, social worker and owner of Kumar Group of Industries, Shivkumar Agarwal said that despite stringent criticism regarding Uttarakhand’s mining policy, the State government, for the first time in the past 35 years, has received four times the revenue from mining, which has surged from Rs 300 crore to Rs 1200 crore which would be used in development works in the State. “Our company, LSC Infratech Ltd has been operating in the mineral and mining sector here for the past 35 years. We are Asia’s largest mineral processing company.
We have 10 units in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh and a total of 16 business units across the country and a family of 2,000 professional partners,” he stated. He further said that earlier, mineral leakage and theft had been taking place due to weakness in the government departments/systems. “So the stone crushing industry was not getting any benefit. Now things have changed for us. Uttarakhand has nearly 400 stone crushing units, making it the State’s single largest employment generating industry, providing direct and indirect employment to approximately 700,000 families. We may say that the stone crushing industry is the biggest industry of Uttarakhand,” he said.
“The turnaround has come about thanks to the good policy framed by the department under the guidance of the chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami. With the reforms effectuated, corruption has been eliminated, customers are happy with cheaper rates, transport problems have been solved and the owners of stone crushers are happy too with increased profits. The mining sector has transformed from unorganised to organised with mining work having become systematic and professionalised,” he said.
He further averred that apart from Uttarakhand, the current mineral policy is also applicable in Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan.
