The BJP in the State came up with a demand on the day Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy started working from the Secretariat.
Following up on his recent letter to Mr. Jagan on illegal sand mining, BJP State president Kanna Lakshminarayana appealed for stern action against those who plundered the natural resource in the garb of free sand policy.
In his message to the CM on Twitter on Saturday, Mr. Lakshminarayana alleged that the sand racketeers minted money by selling at exorbitant rates as former CM N. Chandrababu Naidu took a lenient view of the complaints of exploitation of the general public and let the culprits go scot-free.
In his letter dated June 3, the BJP State chief stated that the free sand policy introduced by the TDP government in 2016 came in handy for the contractors and henchmen of the ruling party leaders to fleece the people. Besides, the Supreme Court directions that no sand mining should be allowed without the conduct of Environment Impact Assessment were blatantly violated.
The National Green Tribunal pulled up the State government for remaining a mute spectator as the illegal sand business flourished in the capital region Amaravati.
Mr. Lakshminarayana suggested that a price be fixed per tonne of sand in order to eliminate the middlemen and generate substantial revenues for the exchequer.
In fact, illegal sand mining has been an important issue highlighted by the YSR Congress Party during its election campaigns. Mr. Jagan had time and again said that sand was free only for the TDP leaders and people were to forced to buy it at hefty prices for constructing houses. He promised to bring a law that would curb the menace.
It may also be recalled that BJP former MLA P. Vishnu Kumar Raju had raked up the issue in the Assembly and demanded that the government fix a ‘rowdy mamool’ for sand and not be under the belief that sand was freely available.