It is, therefore, compelling to hold that a DSR [district survey report] is valid and tenable only when a proper replenishment study is conducted.” This line from a Supreme Court order, dated August 22, 2025, pertains to a National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) project in Jammu and Kashmir, and has ramifications on river mining activities across India.
The Supreme Court order means that scientific assessment of a river’s sand replenishment is now a legal requirement, without which the government cannot grant a sand mining licence. “This judgement is significant as the Supreme Court has reiterated the existing legal regime, according to which a replenishment study forms an integral part of the DSR. A DSR without replenishment study is therefore untenable,” Srishti Agnihotri, advocate on record, Supreme Court, tells Down To Earth. Agnihotri assisted senior advocate Anitha Shenoy, who argued the case for Srinagar-based environmental activist Raja Muzaffar Bhat at the Supreme Court.
The case pertains to four-lane bypass and ring road project of NHAI in Srinagar, under which three sites were identified for sand mining—Dragam bridge downstream, Bandarpora upstream and Panjam to Trumbi bridge downstream.
On April 19, 2022, the Jammu and Kashmir State Environment Impact Assessment Authority granted environmental clearance (EC) to the three projects. The same year, Bhat filed an appeal with the National Green Tribunal (NGT), challenging the ECs. Bhat’s appeal stated that the Jammu and Kashmir Expert Appraisal Committee (JKEAC) had rejected the projects in its 81st meeting on January 3, 2022, on the grounds that the concerned area had already been excessively exploited. The appeal said that these projects violated the Jammu and Kashmir Minor Mineral Concession, Storage, Transportation of Minerals and Prevention of Illegal Mining Rules, 2016, which prohibit mining within 25 m of the embankment. The appeal also said the DSR did not have a replenishment study, as required by the guidelines, and that JKEAC had also recorded this fact before granting EC. Lastly, the appeal said that the project proponents used heavy machinery for mining, which is prohibited.
NGT held that a DSR without a replenishment study is incomplete and environmental clearance based on it is illegal. The tribunal, therefore, cancelled all ECs issued to these projects on April 19, 2022.
The project proponents—the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and NHAI— approached the Supreme Court against NGT’s decision, but the country’s apex court dismissed the appeal. In its judgement, the Supreme Court said that sand mining can only be granted when DSR is complete and effective, and that any clearance granted on the basis of a draft DSR is legally invalid. DSR must be prepared in accordance with the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification 2016, and the Sustainable Sand Mining Management Guidelines of 2016 and 2020, to ensure that the decision of mining is based on scientific grounds and only after assessing the annual replenishment rate.
Down To Earth has sent a questionnaire to the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, asking the steps taken to ensure states’ compliance with the order, but no response was received till the magazine went to print.
Experts, however, say that if a sand replenishment study is to be done, mining will have to be stopped during the study period. This is because river dynamics change every year, and it is a difficult to determine how much sand will be deposited annually. They also warn that studying replenishment is a long process. “At least three years of study is needed to assess how much mining, on an average, can be allowed in a river stretch. This is a continuous process and has to be done every year in pre- and post-monsoon seasons,” says Ramakar Jha, former member of Bihar’s State Environment Impact Assessment Authority and professor at the National Institute of Technology, Patna. “Usually, a mining licence permits extraction of up to 1 m of sand, so that if replenishment does not happen the following year, the river still remains alive. But miners extract five times the limit. It is, therefore, necessary to have a replenishment study,” Jha adds.
Arif Jamal, professor at the Department of Mining Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology-Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, also says that there should be at least three consecutive years of study, including observations of rainfall, in potential mining areas to have a decent assessment. But he says that even a study can reveal only a reasonable, say “up to 70 per cent accurate assessment” of replenishment. “Factors like weather and water flow are too complex and dynamic,” he says. Jamal also says that extracting sand from rivers is necessary because if it is not done, the severity of floods can increase.
Himanshu Thakkar of the non-profit South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, says the government should not leave the replenishment study to project proponents. “Else, like environmental impact assessments, where project proponents write arbitrary reports, replenishment studies, too, might see the same fate,” he says.
This article was originally published in the October 1-15, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth