RHB hand-in-gloves with contractors behind soil smuggling

JAIPUR: Soil smuggling by contractors around the Meena Ki Dhani area in Pratap Nagar Sectors 26, 28 and 29 in connivance with the Rajasthan Housing Board (RHB) officials, has left at least 40 open pits, now filled with rainwater, and claimed five lives in the past one month, including three children, on Friday.
According to residents in the area, the earthmovers work throughout the night and dig craters all around to transport soil to various places.According to an estimate, this illegal soil trade is worth Rs 15,000 per day.
The state government and its agencies, including the RHB, have done little to fill the huge deep pits and the residents, including children, are forced to live with these death pits. Rameshwar Sharma, a local resident who had to come to console the grieving family that had lost three sons, who drowned in a plot dug up by RHB, said hundreds of hectares around the area have been converted to the small and large ponds due to over- excavation of soil by the contractors.
"Hardly, a few trolleys of soil are used for the ongoing construction in the area while hundreds are smuggled out and sold in open market during the night with the connivance of RHB officials," Sharma claimed.
The open pits, according to locals, are dangerous for people and animals. Children after school often graze animals around the green patches, and as the animals often stray into these pits, the children also follow. These pits dot the surrounding residential stretch of RHB's sites for multi-storied complexes.
Ramdev Meena recollects how the Board had allegedly forcibly acquired their thousands of hectares (farm lands) in 1990 and retracted on the promised plots for their residence.
"The entire stretch of land in the area was our ancestral property. We used to grow crops here but the government acquired it with the promise that we will be given bigger plots for our houses," said Ramdev. However, his plea to successive governments for help have fallen on deaf ears in the past two decades.
Meanwhile, residents now fear that their thatched houses will be razed as the RHB has asked them to vacate the place, where they have been living for the past 20 years.
There are at least 100 families near the Meena Ki Dhani around which thousands of apartments are coming up. The residents fear ousting by the Board after the recent incident of drowning.
"Even after we lost our children, no one from the government visited us nor have they given the lease for our plots as promised while acquiring the land," said Babulal Meena, who lost his three sons on Friday.