Beach sand mining | 16.04 lakh tonnes have been transported illegally between 2018 and 2022, Tamil Nadu Govt tells Madras High Court

TN govt informs HC 16.04L tonnes BSM illegally transported by private miners b/w 2018-22; 6.62L additional stock found in possession of miners; HC took up suo motu PIL in 2015; TN govt issued GO in 2017 to take stock of BSM; reassessment report filed in 2021; 6,448.362 tonnes of monazite found in 4.83L tonnes of additional semi-processed BSM; TN govt seeks HC permission to hand over minerals to IREL.

The Tamil Nadu government on Monday informed the Madras High Court that 16.04 lakh tonnes of valuable beach sand minerals (BSM) had been transported illegally by the private miners in the State between 2018 and 2022 though there has been a ban on transportation of the minerals since 2013.

Filing a reasssessment report before Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy, the government said, 6.62 lakh tonnes of additional stock of BSM too was found in possession of the miners, compared to the 2018 assessment, despite a ban on mining for the last 10 years.

The report was filed during the hearing of a suo motu public interest litigation petition taken up by the court in 2015 regarding allegations of large scale illegal mining in the coastal districts of Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli and Kanniyakumari, along with a batch of individual writ petitions filed by the private miners.

In the reassessment report, Natural Resources Department Secretary K. Phanindra Reddy stated that the High Court had on January 11, 2017 ordered constitution of a special team to take stock of the BSM stored in the processing plants, storage yards, bonded warehouses and other places.

Accordingly, the State government on April 7, 2017 issued a Government Order appointing Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Satyabrata Sahoo to head the team which submitted a report on April 18, 2018 stating that stocks to the tune of 1.5 crore tonnes had been stored in the three districts.

Thereafter, in 2021, there were complaints of illegal transportation of the BSM from the sealed premises and a few First Information Reports (FIRs) too came to be filed against the transporters by the police. Further, the revenue officials also seized trucks used for transportation of the minerals.

Enquiries revealed that the power supply for the closed circuit television cameras installed at some of the sealed premises had been snapped by miscreants. When the officials installed solar-powered CCTV cameras, the entire equipment along with the solar panels were damaged to facilitate illegal transportation.