THOOTHUKUDI: The interim order of the Madras High Court giving liberty to the State government to release the beach sand that are 'legally' excavated, and has royalty paid, from the sealed godowns has come as a shocker for activists as the government agencies concerned had already declared that all the minerals hoarded at the godowns are illegally mined.
On September 1, the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court passed the interim order allowing the State government to decide on releasing the excavated beach sand with payment of royalty. "It is up to them to release or wait for the outcome of the writ petitions to release the beach sand excavated legally followed by payment of royalty", the order said.
To find the extent of the irregularities that took place in beach sand mining, the State government had formed two committees under bureaucrats Gagandeep Singh Bedi and Satyabrata Sahoo during 2013 and 2017 respectively. The Satyabrata Sahoo committee report exposed gross mismatch of beach sand minerals in possession and those kept in the Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli and Kanniyakumari. The owners and lessees had declared only 85,58,734 tonnes of Beach Sand Minerals on record but had stashed over 1.55 crore tonnes of such minerals. Since 2017, multiple theft of minerals took place at the godowns and over 20 FIRs have been registered, which then led to the industries department to reassess the stock.
Meanwhile, court-appointed Amicus Curiae Dr Suresh found that 56.39% of raw sand, 61.82% of garnet and 70.20% of ilmenite, 70.79% of rutile, 99.69% of zircon, 100% of both sillimanite and leucoxene, were illegally mined and transported. In the report, Amicus Curiae noted there was a significant mismatch between monazite extracted and raw sand quarried. "At least 4.69 crore to 4.93 crore tonnes of raw sand were required to extract 23,461 tonnes of monazite, but the respondent reported that only 98.88 lakh tonnes of raw sand were being extracted from 2001 to 2016, exposing a massive illegal mining of raw sand of over 4.5 times than declared value," it said, adding that various companies are yet to pay a royalty of Rs 5,832.44 crore.
In a counter affidavit, the Tamil Nadu's industries department claimed that the entire quantum of raw sand, semi-processed and processed minerals at the godowns are illegally mined and requested the court to grant permission to hand over the entire stocks to IREL Limited or Tamil Nadu Minerals Limited (TAMIN) for disposal. However, the Department of Atomic Energy stated that the possibility of excessive raw sand mining against the declared quantities and grades cannot be ruled out.
"Releasing the royalty paid stock to the private company is not possible as the Union government had prematurely terminated all existing mineral concessions for the private companies in 2019. Neither the Union government's advocate general nor solicitor general appeared when the interim order was passed," activist S Kumaresan said and added that this order may benefit only those who plundered the country's mineral wealth.
Federation of Indian Placer Mineral Industries President Dr D Dhaya Devadas said the interim order seems to have been given in a hurry, without considering the reports of five special teams formed after High Court directions and ignoring findings of the Amicus Curiae and counter affidavits of both State and Union government respondents.