Warcha salt mine is an active salt mine located in village

Warcha Warcha ( ur, ), is a village and one of the 51 Union Councils (administrative subdivisions) of Khushab District in the Punjab Province of Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), i ...

, Khushab District of

Punjab, Pakistan Punjab (; , ) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in central-eastern region of the country, Punjab is the second-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the largest province by population. It shares land borders with the ...

, with over 1 billion tonnes reserves of 98% pure (on-average), transparent and crystalline Sodium chloride salt. Warcha salt mine was launched in 1872, and is still producing over 200,000 tons of rock salt annually with capacity to doubling up its productions.

History

During the

Mughal era The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

, Warcha was a princely state ruled by phulial family, a sub caste of

Awan tribe Awan (Punjabi and ur, ) is a tribe living predominantly in the northern, central, and western parts of Pakistani Punjab, with significant numbers also present in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Kashmir, and to a lesser extent in Sindh and Balochistan ...

. The ruler of the state was called the Chief of Warcha. Nawab Surkhuru was the last Chief of Warcha. In 1834, after the end of

Mughal Empire The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

, Sardar Hari Singh Nalwan, the Commander in Chief of

Sikh Army The Sikh Khalsa Army (), also known as Khalsaji or simply Sikh Army, was the military force of the Sikh Empire. With its roots in the Khalsa founded by Guru Gobind Singh, the army was later modernised on Franco-British principles by Maharaja Ran ...

conquered and took control of Warcha including all local mines. In 1860s, the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

government took over the Warcha. And they gave administrative control of all local mines to the ''Excise and Custom Department'' of British India, which for the first time introduced the

room and pillar mining Room and pillar or pillar and stall is a variant of breast stoping. It is a mining system in which the mined material is extracted across a horizontal plane, creating horizontal arrays of rooms and pillars. To do this, "rooms" of ore are dug out ...

method in the Warcha. They later started development of the main mine in 1868, which started production in 1872. In 1962, Warcha salt mine was handed over to the West Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation. And since 1974, it is owned and managed by the Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation.

References

{{Reflist Mines in Pakistan Salt mines in Pakistan

History

See also

References