Supreme Court stays Madras HC order to shut sand quarries within 6 months

A two-member bench, comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta, issued the stay after the senior counsel Mukul Rohtagi, representing Tamil Nadu government, pointed out that the construction activities in the State had suffered a serious blow due to the order of the Madras High Court. 

Hence, the ban should be lifted. Following this, the Madras HC order was stayed and a direction was made to the TN government to file a detailed report on the difficulties faced by the construction sector. It also ordered the sand importing firms to file their counter to the state government’s petition and posted the case for next hearing to February 20. It may be recalled that the Madras High Court had on January 19 upheld a single judge order directing authorities to stop sand mining in Tamil Nadu within six months. 

On November 29 last year, Justice R Mahadevan had directed the Tamil Nadu government to stop all sand mining and quarrying activities in the state within six months and not to open any new sand quarries. 

Dismissing appeals filed by Collectors of Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli and Kanniyakumari districts, a division bench comprising Justices K Kalyanasundaram and T Krishnavalli directed authorities to strictly comply with the single judge’s order. Justice Mahadevan in his order had said that sand had been quarried beyond permitted level affecting the flow of water in rivers and impacting agriculture in the state. The order was passed on a petition of MRM Ramaiya, a trader seeking a direction to the state to permit him to sell the river sand he had imported from Malaysia and stored at the Tuticorin Port.