In the Chunar Tehsil of Mirzapur District illegal stone crushing, cutting and pokland machines have been operating on a massive scale and quite blatantly. Blasting occurs daily in the hills to loosen the stones. With the help of Socialist Party (India) a local resident Parasnath Yadav filed an application under the Right to Information Act, 2005 asking the District Magistrate whether any permission was granted to the crushing, cutting and pokland machines and blasting. A reply dated 19 June, 2015 says that crushing and pokland machines have no permission. For the rest he suggests that pollution control department and the explosives department should be asked. Enthused by the reply of DM, on 15 July about a thousand residents of Dhuria, Madachak, Jigna, Bagahiya, Dakhi, Anandipur, Kanchanpur, Baradih and Bindpurwa came out on street and took out a march and stopped all the illegal activities by arriving at the site and asking the companies or contractors to shut down their activities. Right now all illegal activities are suspended. We demand that the Government of U.P. permanently stop these activities which are a threat to environment. So far as employment of labourers is concerned, workers’ cooperatives should be formed and given the contract to break stone manually, as used to happen before the arrival of machines. About one and half lakh labourers were unemployed after the mechanization of entire operation.

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