An advocate commissioner appointed by the Madras High Court Bench here has reported possibilities of huge quantity of river sand having being quarried illegally from Cauvery river bed at Manjakorai, a hamlet near Gunaseelam in Tiruchi district.
In his report, advocate T.S.R. Venkatramana said: “During my visit, I saw marks of vehicle suggesting illegal movement of vehicles. I saw heaps of sand dumped in for illegal transport. I also saw big pits where sand had been removed. All these suggest there has been illegal quarry.”
The court had appointed him as an advocate commissioner on June 10 on a public interest litigation petition filed by a local resident S. Narayanan alleging illegal quarrying. The commissioner had visited the site on June 13 along with Revenue and Public Works Department officials.
“As I was driving to the spot, I noticed more than 50 trucks parked in a nearby place. Apparently, these lorries were waiting to lift sand illegally,” the advocate said in his report and complained of the PWD having laid a road from the bund to the middle of the river to facilitate movement of trucks.
“I am unable to understand when no final order has been issued by the Government of Tamil Nadu or the District Collector for quarrying, how the PWD can arrange a huge bund inside river Cauvery in the disguise of an access road,” he wondered.
Though the PWD officials had reportedly told him that the access road, created by mixing sugarcane waste with river sand, will be demolished after the quarry becomes defunct, the villagers rebutted the contention and claimed that the PWD never demolishes such roads, he added.
“To prove this, I was taken to about three kilometres north to Amoor wherein an artificial bund road was very much available even though the sand quarry was defunct. The PWD engineer, who told me that the bund road will be removed at Manjakorai, turned around and said that this road will be washed away in floods. “Thus, the officer was approbating and reprobating… The present act of allowing removal of sand from the Cauvery in a pre-identified middle plot of 23 hectares will be a booming ground for fraud and cheating,” Mr. Venkatramana asserted.
