Madras High Court: Plea to mandate M-sand, ban river sand mining

Chennai: An agriculturist and former MLA has approached the Madras high court to direct the state government to ban river sand mining and mandate compulsory use of M-sand (manufactured sand) as an alternative material for construction activities and to cancel the licenses granted to various sand quarries. A division bench comprising Justices Huluvadi G.Ramesh and R.Mahadevan before whom the PIL from M.Appavu came up for hearing, ordered notice to the state government and posted to March 2, further hearing of the case.

According to Appavu, in 2002, on a PIL, this court directed the state government to constitute a high level committee for conducting a scientific survey with reference to sand quarrying in rivers and river beds and submit a report with particular reference to damage caused on account of indiscriminate and illegal sand quarrying and to spell out remedial measures to ameliorate the malady. Accordingly, the committee after an extensive study submitted its report recommending various measures for regulation of sand mining in the state.

One of the measures suggested by the committee was to bring suitable amendments to the Tamil Nadu Minor Mineral Concession Rules. Consequently, the government introduced Rule 38-A, whereby all existing leases for quarrying sand have been made ineffective and the right to exploit sand in the state vest with the state government, he added. He said another major recommendation of the committee was to encourage research program to find alternate materials for sand and in pursuance of the same, PWD has issued circular, permitting the use of crushed stone sand as an alternate material to natural sand and also standardized the usage of the said crushed stone sand in construction activities.

In spite of the recommendation of the use of crushed stone sand, the usage of river sand continues in all construction activities not only in private sector but also in govt sector at various levels. Since the river sand was continuously mined, the state has to face a drastic situation of rapid drying up of rivers, lakes, ponds, severe water scarcity leading to drought. Agricultural wells have already dried up and without enough water, doing agriculture itself was under question and due to this uncertainties many farmers have committed suicide and under the verge of quitting very agriculture, he added.

HC dismisses petition to produce two MLAs:

The Madras high court has dismissed the petitions, which sought to produce MLAs M.Geetha and R.T. Ramachandran, allegedly kept in illegal detention at Koovathur, before the court and set them at liberty. A division bench comprising Justices M.Jaichandran and T.Mathivanan dismissed the petitions filed by advocates V.Preetha and M.R.Elavarasan. While Preetha sought a direction to the police to produce her cousin and MLA from Krishnarayapuram assembly constituency Geetha before the court and set her at libety, Elavarasan, also a voter from Kunnam constituency, Perambalur district, sought a direction to the police to produce MLA from Kunnam constituency Ramachandran before the court and set him at liberty.

Referring to the suggestion to appoint a commission or an amicus curie, the bench said, “We are not in agreement with it. We have considered the counter affidavit filed by the additional commissioner of police (law and order), South, Chennai, and the submission made on behalf of the state by the public prosecutor. We have also carefully considered the submissions made on both sides and having taken into consideration of the relevant facts, we find that since the question of maintainability is hanging over on the petition, we do not find any merits”.

The bench placed on record that in the Sengodi’s case, a division bench of the court in an unambiguous term has held that “even by assuming without admitting that a practicing advocate can be permitted to enter into the shoes of his client, we have to keep in mind the consequences that will follow, if such acts are permitted to be performed by a practicing advocate. If such a situation is permitted then there may not be any client-advocate relationship but only client and defacto client relationship between the party and his counsel resulting in adversary affecting the dignity and decorum of the noble profession. The etiquette prescribed under the BCI rules wherein Rule 9 contemplated that an advocate should not act or plead in any manner in which he himself is peculiarly interested and Rule 18 mandated that an advocate shall not act at any time be a party to fomenting litigant”.