In less than a month of coming to power, the Amarinder Singh government in Punjab ordered a crack-down on illegal mining and declared it would go for e-auction of sand mines across the state. The auction of 89 sand mines eventually took place on May 19 and 20. It helped the Punjab mining department generate revenue of nearly 1,000 crores, many of the bids reportedly 20 times higher than previous years. But the government may not have been the only one to benefit from the e-auction.
