Kollam: The Left Democratic Front (LDF) government's alleged move to stealthily allow a private company to carry out mining of beach sand in Kerala met a roadblock after a senior officer put up strong resistance.
As per the Atomic Minerals Concession Rules, only public sector undertakings can carry out mining of the mineral-rich black sand.
However, Director of the Department of Industries and Commerce K Biju, who is also the director of the Mining and Geology Department, resisted the move. The file has been left for the consideration of legal department.
A Kochi-based private company had sought permission for mining. The officials sought to give the nod by citing a Supreme Court ruling of 2004 that said the private company should also be considered for giving mining permission.
However, Biju pointed out that permission cannot be granted, citing the Centre's law.
The CPM leadership made the move on the sly without even the knowledge of its allies. Even the Opposition is against allowing private sector to carry out beach sand mining.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday refuted reports of granting permission for the private company to mine-out black sand. Privatisation of black sand mining is not in the government's agenda. Only public sector undertakings will be allowed to carry it out, Pinarayi said.
The Kerala coastline, including Kollam-Alappuzha shores, has 150 crore tonnes of rare mineral deposits. The largest ilmenite deposit in the world is in Kollam.
The beach sand of Kerala shores is rich in monazite, rutile, leucoxene, garnet, and zircon.
Against LDF's manifesto
Ironically, the LDF had in its election manifesto in 2016 said that the mines in Kerala should be owned by the State. Action would be taken to ensure environmental protection and mining of beach sand would be carried out for value-added processing of mineral sands, it said.
Centre bars private companies
The Union government had brought in amendments to the Atomic Minerals Concession Rules earlier this year, prohibiting private companies from mining beach sand minerals.
Earlier, the rules stipulated that if the threshold limit for monazite in the beach sand was less than 0.75 per cent, then private companies can carry out sand mining. However, the rules were amended that said even in the absence of monazite, mining should be carried out by public sector undertakings.
The Centre also brought in amendments in last September to ban the export of rich sand minerals by private companies.
Only the Indian Rare Earths (IRE) has permission to export rare mineral sand.
