Gurugram razes 10 illegal RMC plants as winter dust crackdown begins

The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) demolished 10 ready-mix concrete (RMC) plants in two days. The action came after the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) reported that some sealed, non-compliant units had broken their seals and restarted operations. Eight plants came down on Tuesday and two more on Wednesday, October 29.

The trigger was an October 27 letter from the HSPCB's Gurugram South regional office. It went to the commissioners of the Gurugram and Manesar municipal corporations and to the town and country planning department (DTCP). The board said closure directions had been issued and the plants sealed, but a few units were still running after tampering with the seals on their plant and machinery.

The board also said these plants lacked a No Objection Certificate and/or Change of Land Use permission from the DTCP or the municipal corporation. It asked the authorities to direct their officers to take demolition action against the illegally operating plants. An annexure listed 63 RMC plants across Gurugram and Manesar that had received closure orders in recent years, in clusters such as Kherki Daula, Wazirpur, Badshahpur, Garhi Harsaru and Sector 37D.

MCG Joint Commissioner (Swachh Bharat Mission) Preetpal Singh told The Indian Express that the board's regional units had specifically flagged about 31 allegedly illegal, functioning plants for direct field action. He said inspectors check whether a unit has the permits to operate on its allotted land. If it does not, owners sometimes dismantle it themselves, and otherwise the corporation steps in. He added that continued monitoring would follow through the winter, because such plants are a major source of dust pollution.

Tuesday's teams razed plants in Bhondsi, Daulatabad, Behrampur, Dhumaspur and Maidawas, including three along Rithoj Road, Jail Road and in Behrampur. On Wednesday, a team under Assistant Engineer Hari Prakash took down two more in Daulatabad. MCG Commissioner Pradeep Dahiya said air quality remains an administrative priority and that surveillance and demolition squads will keep targeting unauthorised facilities over the coming weeks.

For readers following the NCR's annual smog story, the move is worth watching. Concrete batching plants add to localised dust and particulate matter, and officials say that worsens the seasonal build-up. Of the 31 plants flagged for field action, 10 are now gone. That leaves a visible backlog, but it also shows enforcement moving from paper orders to bulldozers, which is the step critics usually say is missing.

The test now is follow-through. Seals that were broken once show why repeat checks matter, and the winter-long monitoring Singh described will decide whether closures hold. For compliant operators and the construction projects they supply, the message is that land-use and NOC paperwork now matter as much as production capacity.

Source: The Indian Express

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