The warning comes in the wake of a splinter group of the joint action committee threaten to move the court against the district adminsitration’s decision to make GPS mandatory for all vehicles, which transport sand.
Convening a meeting with the Sand Contractors, Sand Boat Owners and Building Materials Transporters Joint Action Committee and Mines and Geology officials on Monday, Deputy Commissioner V Ponnuraj said that though there is no strong legal backing for the decision of the district administration’s decision of installing Global Positioning System (GPS), it is the only way out to curb illegal transportation of sand because district administration has manpower crunch.
The Joint Action Committee, which has agreed to the decision taken by the DC has now demanded the district administration to publish clear guidelines with regard to sand transportation, provide licence to a minimum of 500 vehicles to transport sand, hold review meeting once in a month and constitute a committee to control illegal sand mining and appoint an efficient Nodal Officer to head the committee.
Reacting to the same, DC said that only 500 trucks will be permitted to carry sand and these trucks will have to register themselves with the Committee by August 10. The registered trucks will have ‘diamond white’ bonnet and blue bumper, will have logo of the Joint Action Committee on left side of the driver along with GPS in it. Any vehicle carrying sand in trucks without anyone of these requisites will be considered illegal.
The DC informed that any other material can be carried in sand transport lorries but any other lorry other than sand transport vehicles carrying sand will be considered illegal and action will be taken against the lorry owner, driver as well as the person who supplied sand. “Licence of each of these persons will be cancelled and they will be blacklisted,” he added.
Committee General Secretary Rajarathna Sanil said that police, revenue officials and the mines and geology department raid the spots of mining every now and then. “In case a sand truck is caught on road, the vehicle is taken to the police station. The documents are seized for verification and the vehicle is not released for about 4 days,” he said and urged that the police should seize the document but release the vehicle.
Nodal officer
The Deputy Commissioner has appointed Mangalore Assistant Commissioner as the Nodal officer who will look into all the sand mining related issues. The DC urged the Joint Act Committee to voluntarily try to stop illegal transportation of sand along with bringing it to the notice of the nodal officer.
However, Committee members opted to bring it to the notice of the nodal officer rather than trying to fight against it. The DC also promised to hold a workshop to create an awareness on laws pertaining to sand mining among the sand miners, transporters and others connected to this activity soon.