The Madras High Court Bench here on Friday reiterated that it was illegal for the government to sell river sand by volume and not weight without exercising the power conferred on it under Section 10 of the Legal Metrology Act, 2009 and prescribing the goods or class of goods that could be sold by weight, measure or number.
A Division Bench of Justices S. Nagamuthu and M.V. Muralidaran said they were of the prima facie view that Public Works Department could not sell sand by its volume in view of a legal embargo. “Even assuming that you can sell by volume, the present method of just scooping out the sand with earthmovers and filling it in trucks cannot be accepted in the absence of authorised instruments to measure even the volume,” the senior judge said.
Justices S. Nagamuthu and M.V. Muralidaran gave time to Advocate General R. Muthukumaraswamy to get further instructions from the State Government on the issue and accepted his plea to transfer the case to the Principal Seat of the High Court in Chennai and list it for hearing on December 13 since the tenure of both the judges at the Bench here would come to an end on December 2.
In his submissions, the Advocate General submitted that though Section 5(1) of the Legal Metrology Act stated that the base unit of mass should be kilogram, sub-clause (2) of the Section provided for prescribing derived units as well as other units apart from the seven base units mentioned in sub-clause (1). Hence, he referred to Rule 13 of the Legal Metrology (National Standards) Rules, 2011 and claimed that unit of volume was a derived unit.
Further, pointing out that the Tamil Nadu Minor Mineral Concession Rules provided for collecting signorage fee only on the basis of volume of sand, the AG contended that there was no illegality in selling sand by its volume. Though there were no instruments to measure the sand before filling them in trucks, the AG said the lorries were calibrated and hence there was no possibility of selling less or more than the prescribed quantity.
Finding it hard to accept the argument, Mr. Justice Nagamuthu said: “It is one thing to measure a product to be sold before filling it in a gunny bag and another to claim that the gunny bag can hold only certain amount of goods and therefore there is no necessity to measure the goods before filling it. Similarly, a tumbler used by me might hold exactly one litre of milk but I cannot use that to sell milk. I will have to use only authorised instruments.
“Those instruments must be approved by the authorities under the Legal Metrology Act. Further, usage of even authorised instruments after the expiry of the approval is also an offence... When such is the case for selling goods even on the roadsides, how can we allow sale of sand just like that?”
