Madras high court had appointed IAS officer U Sagayam to probe illegal mining
IAS officer U. Sagayam, to probe into the illegal mining
Chennai: The Madras high court on Tuesday clarified that its order appointing former Madurai district collector and IAS officer U. Sagayam, to probe into the illegal mining, is at present confined only to Madurai district and that too granite mining alone.A division bench comprising chief justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M. Sathyanarayanan disposed of the petition filed by Sagayam, which sought to clarify as to whether the court’s mandate was for all the 32 districts in the state and whether it would cover all forms of mining ranging from river sand mining to coastal sand mining and granite mining.
“The task at present assigned to the special officer/legal commissioner is only granite mining in Madurai. in respect of which he had submitted a report earlier. If he needs any assistance of any specified officers in the said task, he may indicate to the government, which will forthwith endeavour to make available those officers so that there is an early conclusion to our directions for submission of report”, the bench added.
The bench said the question whether the area of scrutiny by the commissioner is to be expanded or not, keeping in mind the larger scope of petition, will only be considered subsequently.
A division bench comprising chief justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Pushpa Sathyanarayana had on September 11 directed Sagayam to visit and inspect the mines and submit a report to the court while closing an interlocutory application filed by social activist Traffic Ramaswamy, which sought a direction to appoint Sagayam to inspect the illegal
mining.
In his clarification petition, Sagayam said, “I wish to know whether as per the order of the court, I am required to inspect and report about mining of all major and minor minerals in the entire state or should I confine the inspection to granite mining in Madurai district alone”.
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