V.V. Minerals on Monday claimed before the Madras HC that a report submitted by Court-appointed IAS officer Satyabrata Sahoo, on the presence of radioactive mineral monazite in beach sand stored at its godowns in Thoothukudi and other contiguous districts, was largely in favour of it.
Arguing before a Division Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and N. Seshasayee, advocate Srinath Sridevan, representing V.V. Minerals as well as Transworld Garnet India, said: “The committee report is in my favour barring five or six findings... It overwhelmingly endorses what I have been saying.”
The submission was made during the hearing of two sub-applications filed by the two firms urging the court to hear at the earliest a couple of writ appeals related to the issue before proceedings with other connected cases. The lawyer contended that the two writ appeals pending since 2015 were the key to the other cases and therefore they must be heard first. He said the core question in those two writ appeals was whether another IAS officer Gagandeep Singh Bedi, who was appointed by the State government in August 2013 to probe into alleged irregularities in beach sand mining, had conducted the inspections and submitted his report in accordance with the directions issued to him by the court in December 2013.
Mr. Sridevan said, a Division Bench of Justices M. Jaichandren and M. Venugopal had passed a detailed order laying down the norms for the inspections by the Bedi committee. However, Mr. Bedi did not act in accordance with those directions, he claimed and urged the court to take up the writ appeals connected with that issue first before hearing other cases.Rejecting the request, the judges said it was not for the court but for the counsels representing various parties to sit together and decide which case to be taken up first.