THOOTHUKUDI: The interim order of the Madras High Court giving liberty to the State government to release 'legally' excavated beach sand from sealed godowns on payment of royalty has taken activists aback as government agencies concerned had previously declared that all the minerals hoarded in the godowns were illegally mined.
On September 1, Madras High Court Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari passed an interim order allowing the State government to decide on releasing the excavated beach sand on payment of royalty. "It is up to them (State) 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 irregularities that took place in beach sand mining, the State government had formed two committees under Gagandeep Singh Bedi and Satyabrata Sahoo in 2013 and 2017 respectively. The Satyabrata Sahoo committee report exposed gross mismatch in beach sand minerals in possession and those kept in the Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari. The owners and lessees had declared only 85.6 lakh tonnes of beach sand minerals on record but had stashed over 1.55 crore tonnes.
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 reassessing the stock. The state government has not submitted the reassessment report in the court yet, an official said.
Meanwhile, court-appointed amicus curiae Dr V Suresh found that 56.39% of raw sand, 61.82% of garnet, 70.2% of ilmenite, 70.79% of rutile, 99.69% of zircon and 100% of both sillimanite and leucoxene were illegally mined and transported. The report noted there was a significant mismatch between monazite extracted and raw sand mined.
"At least 4.69 to 4.93 crore tonnes of raw sand is required to extract 23,461 tonnes of monazite, but the respondent reported that only 98.88 lakh tonnes of raw sand was extracted from 2001 to 2016, exposing a massive illegal mining of raw sand of over 4.5 times than the declared value," it said, adding that various companies are yet to pay a royalty of Rs 5,832.44 crore.
In a counter affidavit, Tamil Nadu industries department claimed the entire quantum of raw sand, semi-processed and processed minerals at the godowns was illegally mined and requested the court to grant permission to hand it over 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 private companies in 2019. Neither the Union government's advocate general nor solicitor general appeared when the interim order was passed," social activist S Kumaresan said, adding that the interim order may benefit only those who plundered natural resources.
Federation of Indian Placer Mineral Industries president 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 governments.