Chennai: The Madras High Court today directed the Tamil Nadu government to give the amicus curiae a copy of the report of the Tuticorin District Collector in cases of alleged illegal beach sand mining in the southern parts of the state.
The high court had in January, 2016, appointed advocate V Suresh as amicus curiae to assist it in the case.
Suresh filed a memo today before the first bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan, seeking some documents, including the report forwarded to the government by the collector after inspecting areas leased out for mining in the district, when a suo motu PIL came up before it.
The HC heard his arguments that the inquiry cannot be confined to only monazite and directed the government to furnish it with the order to enable the amicus curiae assist the Court in the matter.
Earlier, the high court had dismissed a PIL alleging that rare earth beach minerals worth over Rs one lakh crore had been plundered by some private companies in Tamil Nadu and that the government had allowed a Tuticorin-based firm and others to export 4.55 lakh metric tonnes of placer minerals like garnet, radioactive monazite, zircon, leucoxene and sillimanite by modifying 16 existing mining leases without any reference to the Centre.
But taking note of the seriousness of the case, the court took up a PIL suo motu and appointed Suresh as amicus curiae.
When the matter came up today, Suresh submitted a memo seeking various documents, including the Collector’s report, saying it is necessary to study the papers so that the issue can be comprehensively dealt with and finality reached.
The Bench, which passed an interim order, directed the government to make available the report. It also granted leave to amicus curie to inspect all records so he may categorise the matters dependent on the prayers made.
Additional Solicitor General G Rajagopalan submitted that the Centre alone has the right to grant permission for monazite mining and that as a policy, no such permission was being granted.
(Sourced from agencies, Feature image courtesy:economictimes.indiatimes.com)
