Update.
The said Company in Tamil Nadu has been put under scanner in Tuticorin following the transfer of the Collector who initiated action.
A committee is enquiring into this , but the locals are doubtful about the enquiry , they are agitating for a CBI enquiry.
” Close on the heels of Uttar Pradesh government suspending Durga Sakthi Nagpal for cracking down on the sand mafia, Ashish Kumar, the district collector of Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu, was transferred on Tuesday, hours after he ordered a raid on sand mines in his area. Kumar, a 2005 batch IAS officer, has been shunted out to a relatively inconspicuous post in Chennai as deputy secretary in department of social welfare and nutritious meal programme…
Kumar confirmed to TOI that he got the transfer orders on Tuesday evening, soon after the raids at VV Mineral owned by mineral exporter V Vaikundarajan ended at 6pm. “I have been served the transfer order. As an officer I am bound to accept the transfer and take up the new assignment,” Kumar said. He refused to link the transfer with his action, but the timing left no one in doubt.
Following complaints of illegal mining in Vaippar and Vembar villages of Vilathikulam taluk in Tuticorin, teams led by his junior, assistant collector G S Sameeran, and revenue officer Kathiresan conducted the searches through the day. Officials said they found large-scale violations. “The mining company had a lease to take up activities on four hectares near the beach, but they were found to have excavated sand from more than 20 hectares, all government land,” Kumar said.
Kumar took over as Tuticorin collector two years ago. He had lasted 45 days in his earlier assignment as the Kanyakumari district collector. This was the second major crackdown on sand miners in Tuticorin this year. About three months ago, district authorities raided mines of another company, Beach Minerals Company. The two companies have been mining for minerals including garnet, iluminite, rutile and monazite, which are primarily intended for export.
In 2012, Tirupathur additional superintendent of police G Dharmaraj was similarly transferred to Nilgiris district after he acted tough on sand miners in Vellore district.
Illegal sand mining has been rampant along the banks of most rivers in TN. Despite court orders directing authorities to impose stiff penalties on violators and seek their prosecution, mining continues unchecked. Depletion of groundwater and destruction of cultivable land have been identified as the most serious consequences of the problem.(http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-08-07/chennai/41167095_1_sand-miners-illegal-sand-mining-sand-mafia)
UPA is lurching from one scam to another.
Bofors,2G,ISRO,CWG,Coalgate and now the Thorium.
Graduating from a mere Rs. 64 Crore through 400 Core,,1,86,000 crore,3 Lakh crore and now 48 Lakh crore!
Excellent progress.
The Statesman,one of the oldest newspapers of India has unearthed a scam involving the disappearance of Thorium from the Indian shores.
The story was hinted by Tamil Fortnightlies Junior Vikatan and Kumudam Reporter about a year back, where the story concentrated more on illegal sand mining in the Kanyakumari and Tuticorin districts of Tamil Nadu.
The person who is holding the monopoly has good contacts with both the DMK and AIADMK parties.
The fun of cancellation and restoration the Licence has been going on for some time now.
Now the lid is off.
Await CAG Report.
The report.
Story:
The Great Thorium Robbery
sam rajappa
Since the UPA government assumed office in 2004 with Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister, 2.1 million tones of monazite, equivalent to 195,300 tonnes of thorium at 9.3 per cent recovery, has disappeared from the shores of India. Thorium is a clean nuclear fuel of strategic importance for both nuclear energy generation and nuclear-tipped missiles. The beaches of Orissa Sand Complex, Manavalakurichi in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu and the Aluva-Chavara belt on the Kerala coast have been identified under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957, as the main monazite bearing areas in the country. In most other countries, thorium reserves are embedded in rocks which require elaborate processing to extract. Public sector Indian Rare Earths Limited having divisions at Chatrapur in Orissa, Manavalakurichi in Tamil Nadu, Chavara and Aluva, and its own research centre in Kollam in Kerala, is the only institution authorised to extract thorium from monazite sands. If the Comptroller and Auditor-General were to audit the accounts of the IREL and the Department of Atomic Energy, custodians of fissile minerals, the coalgate scam would look like small change. The missing thorium, conservatively estimated at $100 a tonne, works out to about Rs 48 lakh crore, putting all other UPA scams in the shade.
To a question by Kodikunnel Suresh addressed to the Prime Minister in the Lok Sabha on 30 November 2011, about the quantum of monazite being exported to other countries and whether the companies mining beach sand have violated the norms of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, V Narayanaswamy, Minister of State in the PMO, said that beach sands containing heavy minerals barring monazite were being exported. However, he said that licence under the Atomic Energy Act was required for the export of monazite and thorium which were prescribed substances, and that no licence was given for the export of these items. The Department of Atomic Energy, directly under Manmohan Singh, delisted heavy minerals like monazite and ilmenite from the prescribed substances list vide SO 61 (E) dated 20 January, 2006, to facilitate their export by private companies. Licences have been issued with the proviso that “having undertaken to comply with the conditions prescribed in the Atomic Energy (Working of mines, minerals hand handling of prescribed substances) Rules, 1984, licence is issued with the approval of the Licensing Authority.”
The Licencing Authority is the Nagpur-based Chief Controller of Mines, under the Union Ministry of Mines. Ever since CP Ambrose, Chief Controller of Mines, an upright officer, retired on 30 June 2008, the post has been deliberately kept open and Ranjan Sahai, Controller of Mines, Central Zone, alleged to be close to private placer mineral industrialists, has been allowed to officiate in place of the Chief Controller. Four years is a long time to keep a key post of crucial, strategic and vital importance vacant. Sahai is said to be the most favoured public functionary of the Union Ministry of Mines working in the field, enjoying dictatorial clout with all officials in the ministry. Several written public complaints against Sahai are pending with the Central Vigilance Commissioner, New Delhi. It is reliably learnt that the Departmental Promotion Committee has already selected an officer working in Nagpur to fill the post of Chief Controller of Mines but his appointment is being prevented by Sahai. Such is his clout in the Ministry of Mines.
According to K Balachandran of the Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research, DAE, commercial exploitation of beach sand in India dates back to 1909 when Schomberg, a German chemist, was exploring for monazite occurrences in search of thorium for the gas mantles industry. After the German, the French, who understood the value of thorium, began buying beach sand from Kerala and exporting it to their country. From this starting point many milestones have been crossed with the discovery of ilmenite, rutile, garnet, zircon and sillimanite in our beach sands. When the Department of Atomic Energy was established in the early days of independence, one of the first decisions Prime Minister Nehru took was to ban the export of thorium. India is reputed to have the largest mineral sands resources in the world. These are also among the least exploited resources having a high potential to meet the country’s energy needs. Seventy per cent of India energy is met by import of oil and gas. The beach placer mining sector was opened to private entrepreneurs in 1998. Export of beach sands registered a quantum jump after 2005. As if to promote exports, even radioactive minerals, much needed for our nuclear energy programme, are allowed to be taken out of the country unchecked. To add insult to injury, private exporters of prohibited minerals are presented with Special Awards and Certificates of Merit by the Chemicals and Allied Products Export Promotion Council of the Government of India. Indiscriminate mining, if not monitored and regulated, can cause severe erosion in the coastal areas.
http://thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=422057&catid=38
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The Licencing Authority is the Nagpur-based Chief Controller of Mines, under the Union Ministry of Mines. Ever since CP Ambrose, Chief Controller of Mines, an upright officer, retired on 30 June 2008, the post has been deliberately kept open and Ranjan Sahai, Controller of Mines, Central Zone, alleged to be close to private placer mineral industrialists, has been allowed to officiate in place of the Chief Controller.
Sahai is said to be the most favoured public functionary of the Union Ministry of Mines working in the field, enjoying dictatorial clout with all officials in the ministry. Several written public complaints against Sahai are pending with the Central Vigilance Commissioner, New Delhi. It is reliably learnt that the Departmental Promotion Committee has already selected an officer working in Nagpur to fill the post of Chief Controller of Mines but his appointment is being prevented by Sahai. Such is his clout in the Ministry of Mines.
- Rs. 35,000 Crore Bribe Details On CD, Tamil Nadu Mining Scam. (ramanan50.wordpress.com)
- Related article on Thorium.
- Scientists disagree with the Minister. “Heavy mineral deposits often contain relatively high levels of radioactive elements (thorium and uranium). It is difficult to obtain clean separation of ilmenite and monazite and physical intergrowths of the two minerals are not uncommon. As a result, ilmenite concentrates obtained from such deposits often contain high levels of thorium and uranium,” writes J Nell, mineral scientist, in a research paper.
The Atomic Minerals Directorate For Exploration and Research of the DAE, claims India’s coastline has a deposit of 10.7 million tonnes of monazite from which it is possible to extract 8,46,477 tonnes of thorium metal. This was also announced by Minister Narayanasamy in the Lok Sabha on March 14, 2012. He said the monazite is spread across States like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Orissa, West Bengal and Bihar. Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh account for 2.16 million tonnes and 3.74 million tonnes monazite respectively.
But Prof HK Naik, head, Department of Mining, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, quotes a 2002 study by the Atomic Minerals Department which says the Indian coastline had a deposit of 12.8 million tonnes of monazite. That means over a period of 10 years, India has lost 2.1 million tonnes of monazite.
“One tonne of monazite has 18 per cent thorium oxide present in it. This means every tonne of monazite would yield 180 kilo thorium oxide. If this is the case, 2,34,421 tonnes of thorium oxide should be accounted for by the DAE,” said Prof Naik. This is in addition to the thorium lost through the export of ilmenite, zircon, garnet and rutile, which all contain a lot of thorium.
VV Mineral (VVM), the Tamil Nadu company, has exported through Tuticorin Port alone 15,87,806 tonnes of minerals during December 1999 to May 2009. “What about the sand they export illegally through other routes? The company website itself claims that their annual export is 3,92,000 tonnes of mineral. The quantity of minerals exported by them during the last 15 years would be a mind-boggling figure,” said V Sundaram, the first chairman of Tuticorin Port Trust.(http://creative.sulekha.com/a-man-behind-thorium-scam-upa-s-silent-on-lethal-swindling-of-precious-resources_593646_blog
- Beach sand mining would impact India’s n-power plans: Activists (vancouverdesi.com)
- Tamil Nadu whistle-blower alleges death threats, silence from govt (ndtv.com)
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