Tamil Nadu government rejects Sagayam's CBI probe recommendation

Chennai: Refuting the loss (Rs 1.11 lakh crore) to the state exchequer due to illegal mining in Madurai district, estimated by special officer and legal commissioner U. Sagayam, the state government has filed a consolidated report before Madras high court, accepting 62 per cent of the recommendations made by Sagayam and rejecting the remaining including the one for CBI probe.

“While Sagayam has commended the steps taken by the district administration, police and the government, there is no necessity warranting the recommendation for CBI inquiry. Sagayam has also not assigned any valid reason in support of his recommendation for CBI enquiry,” said Chief Secretary Girija Vaidyanathan in her 146-page report.

 She said in the PIL filed by Traffic Ramaswamy, this court had directed Sagayam to visit and inspect mines and submit a report for the purpose of ascertaining whether action is being taken at the sites in question. Thus, the scope of Sagayam was limited to whether action by government has really been taken or not. Out of 212 recommendations of Sagayam in his report, government accepted 131 recommendations and rejected 67 recommendations. Sagayam adopted two different yardsticks while arriving at the loss of revenue to the state ex-chequer. 

He has taken the assessment of evaluation team for calculating loss on private patta quarries whereas adopted the assessment of team for recovery percentage with regard to Tamin quarries without even assigning any reasons why he adopted two yardsticks for private quarries and Tamin. The logic by which he arrived at the above loss was also disputable.