CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Friday ordered the Tamil Nadu revenue secretary to appear before the court and explain the modalities to be adopted for granting permission to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for removing prosopis juliflora as per the earlier orders of the court.
A special bench of justices N Sathish Kumar and D Bharatha Chakravarthy, dealing with forest-related matters, directed the officer to be present in the court on July 31. It appointed him as the nodal officer for implementing the orders on removal of the invasive species, and instructed the state government to allot necessary funds for the drive.
The court also directed the government to process the applications for permission within 24 hours.
The directions were issued after MDMK leader Vaiko, one of the petitioners, appeared in the court and complained of slackness in implementing the court’s orders for removing the invasive weeds in order to protect the environment.
He said the local revenue department officials are reluctant to grant permission to NGOs carrying out the work, and only after the district collectors intervene, they allow the volunteers to remove the weeds.
Illegal mining
Meanwhile, advocate M Purushothaman, appearing for one of the impleading petitioners in the case of illegal mining of soil and gravel in ecologically sensitive areas in Coimbatore district, submitted before the special bench that as many as 5 lakh tonnes of soil and gravel have been illegally mined.
He said the persons involved in such illegal activity have given statements to the RDO that they had done it for “SR Group”. The counsel prayed for the bench to order a probe by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into the money laundering aspect despite the special investigation team (SIT) formed by the court has already been investigating the offence.
However, the bench opined that too many agencies probing a particular offence may derail the investigation. “Let the predicate offence (of illegal mining) be made out. Then, we will look into whether to order for an ED probe or not,” the bench said.
It directed the SIT to speed up the investigations and file the final report in the jurisdictional court as expeditiously as possible. It also sought the team to file a status report on the progress in the probe by September 18.