The Enforcement Directorate (ED) which has been on a spree conducting searches at the sand mining quarries in Tamil Nadu, on Monday made shocking revelations, in the Madras High Court, with regard to financial irregularities. The ED informed the court that the total sale value of the illegal excess sand mined in the past one to two years was Rs 4,730 crore as against the recovered revenue of merely Rs 36.45 crore.
In the objection petition filed before the court, the ED said that the technical study of the mining sites and illegal mining happened in extended areas as well as extended depths. The technical study, according to ED, was collected through Satellite Imagery by National Remote Sensing Centre, ISRO and IIT Kanpur.
“The expert team conducted the technical survey using technologies such as drones and LIDAR surveys, Bathymetric surveys, etc, during the months of October and November 2023.”
ED also informed the court that “as per the report from the expert team, as against permitted mining area in 28 sites of 195.37 hectares, actual mining impacted area is 987.01 hectares. Further, the report reveals that as against volume recorded in the books of Water Resources Department (WRD) of 4.05 lakh units of sand, actual volume of sand mined is 27.70 lakhs units, resulting in excess volume of sand illegally mined of around 24 lakh units.”
A Madras High Court division bench comprising of Justices S.S. Sundar and Sunder Mohan heard the petition filed by ED, in objection to the five writ petitions filed jointly by the state Public Department Secretary K. Nanthakumar on behalf of the collectors of Ariyalur, Karur, Vellore, Thanjavur and Tiruchi districts challenging the summons issued to them by the ED. The ED had summoned them for interrogation on November 17, in the illegal sand mining case which has shaken the political infrastructure in Tamil Nadu.
After hearing the arguments from senior advocate Dushyant Dave, appearing for the state government and Additional solicitor general A. R. L. Sunderesan, appearing for the ED, the bench reserved the orders for Tuesday.
ED has been conducting searches and interrogating several water resources department engineers for the past two months. Subsequently ED had issued summons to district collectors to produce details regarding the names of sand mining sites in their districts, the complete address of the quarries, their GPS coordinates, the GPS address of the sand depots, the GPS coordinates of the depots, the permitted area of sand mining and the permitted depth.
Meanwhile, the DMK insiders say that the illegal sand mining case could turn into yet another 2G moment for the party.
