Illegal sand mining: Plea by lorry owners' body to governor in Tiruvallur dt

Chennai: Tiruvallur does not have even a single sand quarry for extraction of sand but at least Rs 5 crore is collected as fine for illegal sand mining in the area each year.

After numerous petitions on this went unanswered, the Tamil Nadu State Sand Lorry Owner’s Federation along with other sand lorry associations submitted a petition to governor, Banwarilal Purohit, on Saturday.

The petition says that local enforcement agencies have turned a blind eye to the violations and requested a drone-surveillance project similar to the one implemented in granite quarries and put forth several other requests.

“There must be gunmen in all the security check points installed with CCTV cameras, all lorries must be enabled with GPS system besides cancellation of driving licences of those flouting norms. The quantity of sand mined illegally must be assessed and the driver has to be fined accordingly,” S. Yuvaraj, president of the association said adding that people working under the revenue officials including car drivers and subordinates are that ones who help in sand mining.
In the petition, it was also mentioned that there has been an increasing trend of adulteration of river sand with sea sand and lorries from other state often go unchecked.

“All the areas banned for extraction of sand must be mentioned separately and village officers, revenue inspectors and others involved in aid of illegal sand mining must be penalised. The government must provide proper receipts while purchasing sand online and stockyards must be set up for safer handling of sand,” read the petition.