The special teams formed to inspect granite quarries to detect violations have found out that the PRP Granites had quarried illegally at 33 places in Melur taluk here.
According to the combined report of the special teams submitted to Madurai Collector Anshul Mishra, of the 33 places, 24 were water bodies, while nine were poromboke lands, where quarrying was forbidden.
“In Melur taluk, PRP had obtained six lease agreements for granite quarrying. They had carried out mining operations on an area of about 100 acres. But the government had not given permission to quarry in all those places,” said an official of a special team.
Though the quarry area is under the control of the Mining Department, maintenance of water bodies is taken care of by the Public Works Department (PWD).
“As of now, special teams are preparing to access the mining depth in the water bodies. The extent of illegal mining at the water bodies will be known only after completion of the assessment process in the area,” an official said. Meanwhile, the surveying works have been expedited by involving 20 teams comprising 200 staff . As of now, 21,700 mined blocks have been evaluated by the district administration.
“As per our investigation, among the 175 granite quarries, PRP has committed 70 per cent of violations. While permission was obtained for 30 per cent of the works directly by PRP, the rest was obtained on benami names. We are classifying the violations under three categories - mining, hiding blocks and sales and export,” said a senior official.
Comments
0 comment