Chennai: The Madras high court has appointed a four-member monitoring committee to oversee the operations of sand quarry by PWD at Oruvanthur village, Namakkal district.
Dismissing a PIL from Varadharajan of Mohanur, Namakkal district, on Friday, the Division Bench comprising Justice M. Sathyanarayanan and Justice N. Seshasayee said “This court is of the considered view that the taluk and district level task forces may not be in a position to carry out the duties and responsibilities, especially in the light of the fact that the quarrying operations is being done by the state government. Therefore an independent monitoring agency is to be put in place to oversee the said operations and submit a periodical report this court.”
The bench constituted a four member monitoring committee comprising Dr A. Arun Thamburaj IAS, Project Director (Sand Mining), Tamil Nadu, Mohan, professor and head of the department, department of environment and water studies, Indian Institute of Technology(IIT), Adyar, Chennai, Dr. S. Ganapathy Venkata Subramaniam, professor, department of environment studies, Anna University, Guindy, Chennai, and Dr. V. Pugazhendi, senior hydrogeologist(retired), TWAD Board, Chennai.
In the petition Varadharajan sought for a direction to quash the sand quarrying operations by PWD continued pursuant to proceedings dated March 12, 2017, of the district collector of Namakkal district.
The counsel for the petitioner S. Sheik Ismail, submitted if the quarrying operations are allowed to go on, it would result in soil erosion and adverse affect on bio-diversity, depletion of groundwater apart, flora and fauna would also be affected and in the event of floods, water may not flow on the river bed freely on account of the rampant sand quarry.
Advocate general Vijay Narayan replied that already taluk level and district level task force are put in place to inspect the quarrying operation.
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