HC orders appointment of commission

Madras High Court here today ordered appointmen of a Commission to visit Southern Enterprises and find whether the report filed by Principal Industries Secretary that the company had illegally mined and stored 16,74,952 tonnes of sand in its premises at Tiruchirappalli was correct or not.
Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice N Kirubakaran said the member of the Commission who would take help from the experts would be announced on Monday.
The petitioner, Daya Devadoss, the representative of the company said that based on the "false" report of the Principal Secretay, their licence had been cancelled.
The company had to face "harassment" of the officials after he lodged a complaint and filed a PIL about illegal mining of beach sand by V V Minerals and sought a direction to stop it.

The company's intention was to protect the nation's precious mineral (garnet sand), he submitted.
The officials started harassing the company after a counter PIL, filed through some persons, charging that the petitioner's company was involved in illegal mining. They started giving false reports about the quantum of sand mined by them and false reviews to the court. The officials even charged that company did not allow the police and revenue officials to inspect their premises, he submitted.
The Principal Secretary filed his report about illegal mining by his company without hearing them. In fact the company had mined only 2,51,268 MT and this could be verified by a fair commission.

They also cancelled the licence and seized the mineral mined by them. They filed a writ petition seeking to quash the order of cancelling the licence and also sought to appoint an advocate commission to find out the quantum of beach sand actually mined by them.