CHENNAI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which has been hunting against illegal sand mining in Tamil Nadu alleging the laundering of huge amounts of tainted money, has made a shocking disclosure of the financial irregularities committed to sand mining.
It said that the actual mining was done to the tune of Rs. 4,730 crore but the government had earned only Rs. 36.45 crore during the last two years.
The disclosure was made in an objection affidavit filed by ED on the batch of petitions filed by the Tamil Nadu government and the ten district collectors challenging the issuance of summons to the collectors to appear for inquiry before the agency with details of the quarrying sites and others information in a prescribed format.
The affidavit, on behalf of assistant director, KM Manjunathan was filed through special public prosecutor for ED N Ramesh. It said that scientific technics, including LIDAR, were employed by a team of IIT-M experts to quantify the amount of sand mined from the quarries across the State.
“As per the report of the team, as against the permitted mining area in the 28 sand mining sites 195.37 hectares, the actual mining impacted area is 987.01 hectares. The volume recorded in WRD books is 4.05 lakh units sand mined, but actual volume is 27.70 lakh units resulting in excess mining of 24 lakh units,” it said.
The affidavit further revealed, “It has been computed that total sale value of illegal excess sand mined in past 1-2 year comes to Rs. 4,730 crores as against recorded revenue of merely Rs. 36.45 crore, which is even less than 1%.”
Additional Solicitor General (ASG) AR L Sundaresan, representing the agency, termed the total proceeds of crime in the offence is Rs. 4,730 crore which was looted from the State Exchequer and the public of the state.
Reading out extracts of statements given by certain officers of the WRD department, he said attempts were made to prevent a top officer from appearing before the ED for interrogation. The said officer was contacted by influential officials, having proximity to the WRD Minister and the Secretary, asking him to abscond by switching off his mobile phones and he did so before finally appearing for interrogation.
References were also made to the CM office, the WRD Minister’s Personal Assistant, a legal advisor of the department and an executive engineer in the statements given by the officials revealed their inability to act against illegal mining due to instructions from the top.