Sand mining has been going on unchecked in Dindigul district, said a majority of the farmers at the monthly grievance redressal meeting held in Dindigul Collectorate on Friday.
Presiding over the meeting, Kottai Kumar, PA to Collector (general), said that the district administration had already formed a vigilant committee and officials were taking action based on complaints.
A group of farmers said that the government officials refused to give permission to them to lift alluvial soil from waterbodies and said that such an illegal sand mining was going on in a big scale. They demanded an explanation.
Many of the waterbodies, which were the source of water for irrigation and helped in recharging the water table, had to be desilted. The expert committee report on Kudaganar was not yet released by the officials, though they had collected details several months ago.
Despite several reminders and appeals to the Forest department officials, there has been no relief to them from the crop damage in upper Kodaikanal by wild animals.
“Either provide us compensation to the crop loss or install solar fencing so that the crops would be saved.”
The Mangarai riverbed was encroached and the farmers appealed to the officials to evict at the earliest.
Though the PWD officials claimed that only for some construction of causeways and small bridges across the Santhanavardini river and Kudaganaru, sand was being lifted, the farmers said that it was factually incorrect as the sand mining was happening across the riverbeds in the district.
