The State government on Monday informed the Madras High Court of having prepared another report with respect to the blanket ban in place since 2013 on beach sand mining as well as the transportation of the minerals that had already been mined and stored in godowns.
Appearing before the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy, Senior Counsel Arvind P. Datar, representing the State government, said the latest report was ready and would be filed in the court in three days.
However, since the Chief Justice would be sitting in the Madurai Bench of the High Court during next week, he decided to list a suo motu public interest litigation petition taken up by the court on the issue in 2015, along with other connected cases, for hearing on December 11.
In February last year, the State government filed a counter-affidavit backing the reports of amicus curiae V. Suresh, and stated that it had decided to recover losses to the tune of ₹5,832.44 crore caused to the exchequer by private beach sand mineral exporters due to illegal mining.
The government told the court that it would seize all the stocks available with them and constitute a Special Investigation Team to probe the illegal mining since 2000-01. It further sought the court’s nod to seize 1.55 crore tonnes of stocks and hand them over to Indian Rare Earths Limited, a central public sector unit.
