The Madras High Court will reserve its judgment on a series of cases related to beach area mining, which remains banned in the state since 2013 due to allegations of massive illegal mining not only of garnet, ilmenite, rutile, zircon and sillimanite , but also the radioactive mineral monazite from Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli, Kanniyakumari and some other districts.
Justices SM Subramaniam and M. Jothiraman on Monday made it clear that Tuesday would be the last day of the marathon oral hearing that had been going on intermittently since December 12, 2024 on the lot that includes a suo motu Public interest litigation petition accepted in 2015. They asked lawyers to present all other submissions through written arguments.
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“We cannot continue to listen to this matter endlessly at the expense of other cases. We will finally include this matter tomorrow for all of you to complete your oral presentations. Thereafter, we will reserve our judgment and you will be able to present your arguments in writing in a day or two,” the chief judge of the Division Bench told a group of lawyers who had discussed the matter at length for more than a month. .
While senior advocate Arvind P. Datar, assisted by additional government advocate B. Vijay, represented the state government; Senior advocate V. Raghavachari and Srinath Sridevan led the arguments on behalf of the largest beach mining company, VV Minerals, promoted by Thoothukudi-based S. Vaikundarajan, who also argued the case in person and denied all mining charges. illegal presented against him.
friend of the court V. Suresh informed the court that he had made an independent assessment of the amount of illegal mining that had taken place even after the State imposed the ban, and that his reports had been accepted by the State government. Senior advocate G. Sankaran and VR Kamalanathan, representing a couple of employee associations, complained of loss of livelihood since 2013.
Mr. Vijay told the court that the state government had accepted the methodology adopted by the friend of the court to quantify the loss caused to the public exchequer and passed orders last month to recover around Rs 5,800 crore from illegal miners. He said the final recovery orders were passed as the court had refused to stay the operation of show cause notices issued by the State.
See: Alleged area loot | Is the ruling DMK in big trouble?
However, Mr. Raghavachari informed the court that the writ petitions challenging the show cause notices were part of the present batch of cases being heard by the Division Bench and that if the court finally quashes those show cause notices justified, then the final recovery orders passed by the concerned district collectors would automatically lose their relevance.
Stating that a substantial amount of court time had already been spent hearing the lot, the judges asked the lawyers to make new submissions, if any, and not to repeat any of their arguments on Tuesday.
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Published – January 20, 2025 08:00 pm IST
