Chennai: The Madras high court has dismissed a petition filed by Federation of Indian Granite and Stone Industry, which sought to constitute a committee comprising representatives from Union ministry of commerce and department of geology and mining to re-assess the loss suffered by the exchequer due to alleged illegal granite mining in Madurai district.
Originally social activist Traffic Ramaswamy filed a PIL seeking a direction to conduct probe into the illegal granite mining. The court had appointed IAS officer U.Sagayam to probe the alleged illegal granite mining in Madurai and submit a report. Accordingly, after completing the probe, Sagayam commission filed his report which among other things stated that the notional loss due to illegal granite mining in Madurai alone was '1 lakh crore. Disputing the same, the federation filed the present impleading petition.
Pointing out that the relief sought for was premature, a division bench comprising Justices T.S. Sivagnanam and G. Jayachandran dismissed the petition filed by the Federation of Indian Granite and Stone Industry.
