Tamil Nadu’s largest beach sand miner and exporter S. Vaikundarajan of V.V. Minerals on Monday complained to the Madras High Court that the State government has begun to issue mining lease termination notices despite a batch of cases pending before the court since 2015.
Appearing before the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy, senior counsel V. Raghavachari, representing Mr. Vaikundarajan, said, the notices had been issued by relying upon reports filed by amicus curiae V. Suresh.
He wondered how government could issue the mining lease termination notices, after the payment of royalty, on the basis of the amicus curiae’s reports which had arrived at the quantum of monazite, a radio active mineral, in the beach sand mineral (BSM) stocks only on notional basis.
The senior counsel urged the court to pass an interim order directing the State government to suspend all further proceedings pursuant to the issuance of the termination notices until the disposal of a suo motu public interest litigation petition taken up in 2015 and other connected writ petitions.
However, the Chief Justice said, a call on such a request would be taken on February 12 and adjourned the entire batch of cases till then, since a copy of the report filed by the Industries Secretary with respect to the availability of BSM stocks with various miners, had not been served on all parties before the court.
The Bench ordered that the copies should be served upon all the respondents in the case before the next hearing.
