PIL against use of measure of unit for sand in High Court

The Madras High Court, on Friday, ordered issue of notice to Legal Meteorology department on a PIL seeking action against government officials for selling river sand under 'prohibited' measure of 'unit'.

The Madurai bench of Justices S Rajeswaran and T Mathivanan, admitting the petition filed by advocate M Rajendran, ordered notice to Director of Legal Meteorology, New Delhi, and Controller of Legal Meteorology, Chennai and posted the case for hearing to September 3.

The petitioner submitted he had already filed a writ petition to ban the measuring methodology adopted by the revenue and public works department in terms of 'unit' and sought to weigh the sand by installing an automatic weigh bridge, also installing a surveillance camera at the quarry site, and fix the price according to the sand weight in 2011.

The Controller was supposed to enforce the Legal Meteorology

Act (LMA) 2009, and by allowing the officials to sell the sand in 'unit' measurement form they were encouraging white collar offenders and allowing illegal sand mining, he alleged.

The officials, the Petitioner said, "are not even aware of the provisions of the LMA" and claimed as per the act, 'unit' was a fake measure.