Green activists urge Centre to stop Adani beach sand mining bid in AP
Social activist EAS Sarma has written to the DAE and Mines Ministry urging them to intervene and prevent the AP govt from awarding the project to any private party, including Adani Group
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♦ AP govt has floated a tender enquiry for the project, with the only qualification being prior mining experience
♦ There is suspicion that the State govt is likely to allot beach sand areas to the Adani Group
Visakhapatnam: Even as the green activists have been expressing serious concern at changing morphology of beachfront in North Andhra Pradesh due to alleged violation of Coastal Regulation Zone regulations, there seems to be a fresh bid to allot beach mineral mining project to Adani Group in Srikakulam and Visakhapatnam districts.
There have been reports in vernacular media that attempts are being made to give the project to a powerful corporate. Noted social activist and former IAS officer EAS Sarma, in a representation to Ajit Kumar Mohanty, Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), and VL Kantha Rao, Secretary of the Department of Mines, Government of India, warns that such attempts are likely to result in an environmental disaster.
The State Government has already floated a tender enquiry sometime ago inviting parties interested in acting as Project Developer and Operator for Planning, Engineering, Financing, Construction, Development, Operation, and Maintenance of Integrated Beach Sand Mineral (BSM) Projects in Gara in Srikakulam district and Bheemunipatnam in Visakhapatnam district in AP, totalling an annual capacity of 10 million tonnes. The only qualification for the bidder seems to be that they should have prior mining experience.
He said there is suspicion that the State government is likely to allot beach sand areas to the Adani Group, following the Union Ministry's highly regressive amendment to the Mines and Minerals (Development & Regulation) Act to permit private mining of beach sands. In fact, a few days before the amendment, the Adani Group formed two subsidiaries specifically for beach sand mining in Odisha and AP, giving one an inevitable impression that the Adani Group and the Ministry of Mines were literally acting in tandem, a situation that calls for a high-level enquiry.
Earlier, Sarma addressed a letter to the Cabinet Secretary raising his concerns on this and the other multiple favours granted to the Adani Group by the Central Ministries. He urged the DAE and the Mines Ministry to intervene urgently and prevent the AP government from going ahead with the allotment of beach sand mining areas to any private party including the Adani Group, failing which he said he will be constrained to infer that both the Centre and the State are acting in tandem to grant undue favours to the Adani Group and call for an enquiry.
