Mukkunnimala quarrying: VACB starts investigation

December 28, 2014 09:52 am | Updated 09:52 am IST - Thiruvananthapuram:

The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) on Saturday opened a criminal investigation into the alleged protracted fraud and corruption in the illegal conversion of plantation land to granite quarries at Mukkunnimala, a scenic hill denuded by years of industrial-level mining.

The agency named at least 40 people, including government officials and miners, as accused in the case.

It said the government had assigned much of the hilly terrain as small holdings to farmers for growing rubber in the 1960s.

Stipulation

The assignment rules specified that the land could be used for no other purpose than the stated one.

Its case was that the influential miners, over the years, bought the land from the farmers for a pittance, clubbed the properties together, and procured mining permits on the sly.

They systematically denuded the vegetation and top soil to extract granite, thus causing irreversible damage to the environment and consequent loss to the government.

The VACB said the licences issued to miners were legally untenable. They had also extracted granite from public land over which they had no excavation rights.

The agency had questioned the genuineness of the Revenue documents submitted by the miners to procure permits.

The local population, an estimated 2,500, comprising 300 families, had been on the warpath against the miners and their official collaborators for several years.

The residents blamed them for their despoiled neighbourhood, pollution, incessant movement of dumper trucks that imperilled civilian traffic, and the blasting that rendered many of homes unstable.

The mining had brought no reciprocal benefits to the local community and had served only to enrich a few, they said.

Investigators said they found that the miners had excavated granite well below the ground level in violation of their licence conditions and extracted stone much above the limit they were permitted to.

The agency would conduct a survey in the locality to assess the quantity of granite mined to estimate the loss to the government.

VACB Director Vinson M. Paul; Superintendent E. Sherifudeen; and Deputy Superintendent R.D. Ajith investigated the case.

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