Government gets time till February 15 to file reply on Sagayam report

The Madras High Court has offered a ‘last opportunity’ for the Government to file its counter in the illegal granite mining case in Madurai district, which was probed by Legal Commissioner U. Sagayam. 

During the last hearing in November 2015, the probe report running over 7,000 pages by  Sagayam was submitted in the High Court following which the Government was directed to file its reply on January 4. However, when the case came up for hearing before the First Bench comprising Chief Justice SK Kaul and Pushpa Sathyanarayan, the Advocate General sought for more time to file the counter. 

The fist bench on adjourning the case to February 15 also held that this is the last opportunity being offered. The bench also kept other pleas on hold, which sought to extend similar probes to other districts and restrict lease on mining that extends for as many as 40 to 50 years. The bench pointed out, “Let’s come to a logical conclusion on this based on the government’s reply and proceed further with the rest.” 

Earlier, V Suresh, counsel for the Legal Commissioner submitted that the documents pertaining to the probe have to be kept in safe custody and that a skeletal staff had to be maintained for at least the next four weeks. The commission was formed based on a PIL plea filed by activist ‘Traffic’ Ramaswamy, who had alleged that the State had incurred a heavy loss due to the irregularities in the allotment of a mining lease. Following this, the High Court had appointed senior IAS officer Sagayam to probe the issue.