How Illegal Mining in Tamil Nadu Thrives: The Jagabar Ali Murder and the Quarry Mafia’s Grip on the State
After the murder of the activist Jagabar Ali on January 17, the Tamil Nadu government ordered the Department of Geology and Mining to do a survey on mining activities across the State and submit a detailed report. The department began the task in Pudukottai district. However, after drone surveys were done in just 200 quarries of Thirumayam block, the work was stopped on the grounds that the Ali murder case had been transferred to the CB-CID. “Any further study will henceforth be based on the CB-CID’s requirements,” said an official involved in the study.
A Madurai-based lawyer who fights cases against the quarry mafia said that this simply meant that the department had abandoned its statewide survey meant to identify illegal mines. “It’s an excuse for the government to relinquish responsibility,” he said. The State government, however, said that it had completed a differential global positioning system survey of 1,132 mines to ascertain the extent of the areas leased for quarrying.
Meanwhile, the Department of Geology and Mining did produce a five-volume report of its findings in Thirumayam, parts of which were accessed by Frontline. They revealed the frightening extent of environmental degradation and revenue loss in one block of Pudukottai district alone and pointed to a mighty mining mafia that enjoys patronage across political parties and across caste and religious affiliations.
Also Read | Crushed by the cartel: The cost of blowing the whistle in Tamil Nadu’s mining badlands
The stone mining loot is similar to the plunder of river and beach sand and granite (which have now been restricted thanks to legal interventions) in the State.
Of the 200 quarries surveyed, 36 were found to be breaking the law. They had licences for a combined extract volume of 6 lakh cubic metres of minerals a year but had illegally mined an enormous 63 lakh cubic metres. This is the irregularity that Ali exposed, for which he paid with his life. The numbers show the sheer size of the environmental and economic plunder happening across the State.
Construction boom
The growth in the quarrying and crushing industry took place after the boom in the State’s construction industry and was further escalated by the scarcity of river sand. A quarry with a Rs 10 crore investment, for example, can yield roughly 1,000 tonnes a day for 20 years. Once the pit mouth goes deep into the gorge, the mines are abandoned since operational costs outweigh the volume extracted.
The State has 1,900 quarries and 300 crushers as per official records. In 2021, the mining department granted 2,931 leases for 8,721 hectares of land, both “patta” (private land) and “poromboke” (government land), to extract minor minerals such as rough stones. The government, however, fixed the revenue target from minerals for 2024-25 at just Rs.2,100 crore.
The report on Thirumayam was submitted to the Commissioner of Geology and Mining, but it was not made public. A senior Mining official told Frontline on condition of anonymity that the team, headed by the Regional Joint Director, Tiruchi Zone, inspected the controversial RR Quarries and 15 other rough stone quarries nearby, as well as 20 others in Thirumayam block. The team included three Assistant Directors (Mines) and three geologists.
Major illegalities
Using a government-empanelled drone survey agency, the team discovered major illegalities in 36 quarries. The licence for RR Quarries, whose employee was arrested for the murder of Ali, had expired in February 2023 itself.
According to the senior official, the approximate cost per cubic metre is Rs.408, which adds up to a huge revenue loss of around Rs.257 crore a year from the 36 quarries. If this is the extent of losses to the exchequer from one block in one district, one can well imagine the magnitude of losses as a result of illegal mining across the entire State.
Rescue service personnel trying to save people trapped in a quarry near Koodankulam in Tirunelveli district on December 18, 2024. Accidents and fatalities as a result of quarry collapses are rising.
| Photo Credit:
BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Sources in the mining department conceded that hundreds of quarries and crushers function without licences, many in inter-State border districts, so that the mined minerals can be easily smuggled to neighbouring States. But these officials also expressed their helplessness.
Violations galore
An official said: “The rules are here to be violated. Obtaining a licence and renewing it are cumbersome exercises. As per the Mining Act, a quarry has to get an environment clearance certificate and have operations cleared in public hearings convened by the District Collector. But with the connivance of a few department people, quarries and crushers skip these steps and proliferate without accountability.”
For instance, it is well known that quarry operators transport stones many times over the permitted volume using a single transport permit. The blocks are moved to stockyards, crushers, and sand units, transformed to various forms, and then supplied to end users, flouting all transit, mining, and sales rules. Many operators also create bogus sales bills.
The Tamil Nadu Prevention of Illegal Mining, Transportation and Storage of Minerals and Mineral Dealers’ Rules, 2011, framed under the Centre’s Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 1957, prohibits the illegal mining of minerals, their transport by any carrier from the place of extraction, or from the stockyard, or from one place to another without valid transit passes. But these rules are openly flouted.
Bulk transit permits also allot each lorry a certain volume of material for transportation. Any violations are to be dealt with severely, but this rule is constantly broken. Only now, after Ali’s murder, has the State introduced e-permits to track consignments.
Rough stones fall under the category of minor minerals, and the Central government’s Mines and Minerals Act delegates powers to the States to form rules and lease out such quarries subject to scientific and systematic mining. The Act rules that illegal mining as a cognisable offence, punishable by imprisonment and fines. But many States are reluctant to enforce the rules strictly because of the potential to make money, and turn a blind eye to illegal mining.
To prevent pilferage and further strengthen enforcement, there is the Mineral Conservation and Development Rules, 2017, under which State governments have been asked to update and form mining rules for minor minerals and notify the same in the gazette.
“Tamil Nadu is yet to adopt and notify its Rules,” said a retired senior official from the Mining Department.
In 2012, the Supreme Court, in Deepak Kumar v. State of Haryana and Others, pointed out that on the basis of recommendations of the Ministry of Environment and Forest, the Ministry of Mines issued guidelines in 2010 and asked the States to follow them. One of the rules was that a mining area that is 5 hectares or above should get environmental clearance. The Tamil Nadu government has not yet implemented it.
Kinds of stone
Tamil Nadu Minor Mineral Concession Rules, 1959, defines “stone” as rough stones, which includes “khandas” (unsized blocks), boulders, and “crushed or broken” stones, including metal jelly, ballast, mill stones, hand chakai, and coarse aggregates, including M-sand (manufactured sand in 3.5 mm size), P-sand (plastering sand in 2.5 mm), and C-sand (concrete sand of 4.5 mm), for construction purposes. It does not include black, white, or other coloured or multicoloured granite.
The retired official said: “The Tamil Nadu government is yet to frame, adopt, notify, and gazette the rules for minor mineral mining. As such, it has technically ceased to execute its power of granting leases and licences for minor minerals. Hence, quarry mining as a whole is rendered illegal under the Mining Act and its Rules. I drew attention to this paradox to the higher judiciary in several cases.”
Durai Murugan, Tamil Nadu Minister for Mines and Minerals, said in the Assembly in the first week of April that the State would constitute a committee to recommend amendments, adding that “some of the rules of Tamil Nadu Minor Mineral Concession Rules were not in line with Central amendments”. Mining rules mandate that the peripheral seam and pit depth should be between 30 and 60 metres for “safe and scientific mining”. But in reality, miners go as far below as 150 to 200 metres, which could cause collapses. In 2022, a few workers were buried alive in a quarry in Tirunelveli district. In 2021, a 19-year-old machine operator in a private quarry in Rakkathanpatti in Pudukottai was buried alive after a cave-in.
Geology experts also argue that measuring excavated rocks in cubic metres has been phased out elsewhere in the world and is faulty under the provisions of the Legal Metrology Act. “It should be measured in tonnes. Cubic metre mainly helps to suppress the real volume of the extracted minerals, thus encouraging corrupt practices,” an official said.
Explosives racket
The procurement of explosives for blasting is another major racket. Mystery shrouds the source of the explosives used in the innumerable illegal quarries. The Explosives Act mandates that only legally permitted quarries, under the Explosives Rules, 2008, will be supplied with a “mandated” quantity of explosives based on the sanctioned volume of extract and location. But this rule, too, remains on paper.
Tamil Nadu falls under the jurisdiction of the Joint Chief Controller of Explosives, South Circle, Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO), who is based in Chennai and primarily responsible for administering the Explosives Act, 1884, governing the manufacture, import, export, transport, possession, sale, and use of explosives.
However, the use of explosives in quarries and mines does not come under the direct purview of PESO. The Directorate General of Mine Safety is the nodal agency for the safety and welfare of miners. It is the local police who are primarily responsible for enforcing the Explosive Substances Act, 1908, and the Explosives Act, 1884, in close coordination with the mining and revenue departments.
Even with these Acts in place, there are large-scale violations in the procurement of explosives, according to sources in the mining department. Even blasting operations are not carried out as per mining protocols, with many accidents reported and many unreported, and cracks appearing in nearby houses and structures. In September 2018, two miners were killed and four others injured in a quarry in Muthudayanpatti in Pudukottai when an explosive was triggered by lightning.
“The miners rarely employ official blasters; amateurs and labourers are used. Even for the 1,900 licensed quarries, less than 500 official blasters are available,” an official said.
Ray of hope
Amid this uncontrolled loot, there is a ray of hope in the form of judicial intervention. As early as 2013, the Madras High Court asked the government to issue strict instructions to District Collectors, police, and other authorities to enforce the provisions of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, the Tamil Nadu Minor Mineral Concession Rules, 1959, and the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Illegal Mining, Transportation and Storage of Minerals and Mineral Dealers’ Rules, 2011. But, after Ali’s murder, when the government once again tried to crack down on illegal operations, the mining cartel—giving an indication of the fallout of any legal scrutiny—unilaterally hiked the price of M-sand and other material and choked supply. The official price of M-sand has jumped to Rs.1,250 a tonne from Rs.650 earlier, while it is sold in the black market at Rs.4,000.
Also Read | Killed on civic duty
As feared, this has impacted the construction industry. Various infrastructural and development works as well as private construction activities are suffering. A quarry owner said: “We are not able to work. Not only are the rules stringent, there is increasing intervention of ‘fake’ environmental activism.”
Durai Guna, an activist against illegal mining, said: “In 2023 too, quarry owners struck work saying they were being harassed by officials and social workers.”
The steep hike in the price of quarry stone and sand has also affected fleet operations. Sella Rajamani, president of the Tamil Nadu Sand Lorry Owners Federation, told Frontline: “The quarry syndicate is holding everyone to ransom. Instead of punishing illegal quarry operators and crushers, the officials harass us. We carry GST-paid bills for consignments. However, we are stopped and our drivers arrested.”
He added: “Nearly 75 per cent of M-sand and other aggregates, of which 80 per cent is illegal, is transported to Kerala from Theni, Coimbatore, and Tiruppur. As quarrying is totally banned in Kerala, the demand there outstrips the supply.”
Nothing, and no one, seems capable of reining in the mining mafia, and the loot continues unabated. While the police and State government officials throw up their hands in seeming helplessness, natural resources are destroyed and activists like Jagabar Ali and R. Jeganathan, who raise their voices in protest, are murdered in cold blood.
After the murder of the activist Jagabar Ali on January 17, the Tamil Nadu government ordered the Department of Geology and Mining to do a survey on mining activities across the State and submit a detailed report. The department began the task in Pudukottai district. However, after drone surveys were done in just 200 quarries of Thirumayam block, the work was stopped on the grounds that the Ali murder case had been transferred to the CB-CID. “Any further study will henceforth be based on the CB-CID’s requirements,” said an official involved in the study.
A Madurai-based lawyer who fights cases against the quarry mafia said that this simply meant that the department had abandoned its statewide survey meant to identify illegal mines. “It’s an excuse for the government to relinquish responsibility,” he said. The State government, however, said that it had completed a differential global positioning system survey of 1,132 mines to ascertain the extent of the areas leased for quarrying.
Meanwhile, the Department of Geology and Mining did produce a five-volume report of its findings in Thirumayam, parts of which were accessed by Frontline. They revealed the frightening extent of environmental degradation and revenue loss in one block of Pudukottai district alone and pointed to a mighty mining mafia that enjoys patronage across political parties and across caste and religious affiliations.
Also Read | Crushed by the cartel: The cost of blowing the whistle in Tamil Nadu’s mining badlands
The stone mining loot is similar to the plunder of river and beach sand and granite (which have now been restricted thanks to legal interventions) in the State.
Of the 200 quarries surveyed, 36 were found to be breaking the law. They had licences for a combined extract volume of 6 lakh cubic metres of minerals a year but had illegally mined an enormous 63 lakh cubic metres. This is the irregularity that Ali exposed, for which he paid with his life. The numbers show the sheer size of the environmental and economic plunder happening across the State.
Construction boom
The growth in the quarrying and crushing industry took place after the boom in the State’s construction industry and was further escalated by the scarcity of river sand. A quarry with a Rs 10 crore investment, for example, can yield roughly 1,000 tonnes a day for 20 years. Once the pit mouth goes deep into the gorge, the mines are abandoned since operational costs outweigh the volume extracted.
The State has 1,900 quarries and 300 crushers as per official records. In 2021, the mining department granted 2,931 leases for 8,721 hectares of land, both “patta” (private land) and “poromboke” (government land), to extract minor minerals such as rough stones. The government, however, fixed the revenue target from minerals for 2024-25 at just Rs.2,100 crore.
The report on Thirumayam was submitted to the Commissioner of Geology and Mining, but it was not made public. A senior Mining official told Frontline on condition of anonymity that the team, headed by the Regional Joint Director, Tiruchi Zone, inspected the controversial RR Quarries and 15 other rough stone quarries nearby, as well as 20 others in Thirumayam block. The team included three Assistant Directors (Mines) and three geologists.
Major illegalities
Using a government-empanelled drone survey agency, the team discovered major illegalities in 36 quarries. The licence for RR Quarries, whose employee was arrested for the murder of Ali, had expired in February 2023 itself.
According to the senior official, the approximate cost per cubic metre is Rs.408, which adds up to a huge revenue loss of around Rs.257 crore a year from the 36 quarries. If this is the extent of losses to the exchequer from one block in one district, one can well imagine the magnitude of losses as a result of illegal mining across the entire State.
Rescue service personnel trying to save people trapped in a quarry near Koodankulam in Tirunelveli district on December 18, 2024. Accidents and fatalities as a result of quarry collapses are rising.
| Photo Credit:
BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Sources in the mining department conceded that hundreds of quarries and crushers function without licences, many in inter-State border districts, so that the mined minerals can be easily smuggled to neighbouring States. But these officials also expressed their helplessness.
Violations galore
An official said: “The rules are here to be violated. Obtaining a licence and renewing it are cumbersome exercises. As per the Mining Act, a quarry has to get an environment clearance certificate and have operations cleared in public hearings convened by the District Collector. But with the connivance of a few department people, quarries and crushers skip these steps and proliferate without accountability.”
For instance, it is well known that quarry operators transport stones many times over the permitted volume using a single transport permit. The blocks are moved to stockyards, crushers, and sand units, transformed to various forms, and then supplied to end users, flouting all transit, mining, and sales rules. Many operators also create bogus sales bills.
The Tamil Nadu Prevention of Illegal Mining, Transportation and Storage of Minerals and Mineral Dealers’ Rules, 2011, framed under the Centre’s Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 1957, prohibits the illegal mining of minerals, their transport by any carrier from the place of extraction, or from the stockyard, or from one place to another without valid transit passes. But these rules are openly flouted.
Bulk transit permits also allot each lorry a certain volume of material for transportation. Any violations are to be dealt with severely, but this rule is constantly broken. Only now, after Ali’s murder, has the State introduced e-permits to track consignments.
Rough stones fall under the category of minor minerals, and the Central government’s Mines and Minerals Act delegates powers to the States to form rules and lease out such quarries subject to scientific and systematic mining. The Act rules that illegal mining as a cognisable offence, punishable by imprisonment and fines. But many States are reluctant to enforce the rules strictly because of the potential to make money, and turn a blind eye to illegal mining.
To prevent pilferage and further strengthen enforcement, there is the Mineral Conservation and Development Rules, 2017, under which State governments have been asked to update and form mining rules for minor minerals and notify the same in the gazette.
“Tamil Nadu is yet to adopt and notify its Rules,” said a retired senior official from the Mining Department.
In 2012, the Supreme Court, in Deepak Kumar v. State of Haryana and Others, pointed out that on the basis of recommendations of the Ministry of Environment and Forest, the Ministry of Mines issued guidelines in 2010 and asked the States to follow them. One of the rules was that a mining area that is 5 hectares or above should get environmental clearance. The Tamil Nadu government has not yet implemented it.
Kinds of stone
Tamil Nadu Minor Mineral Concession Rules, 1959, defines “stone” as rough stones, which includes “khandas” (unsized blocks), boulders, and “crushed or broken” stones, including metal jelly, ballast, mill stones, hand chakai, and coarse aggregates, including M-sand (manufactured sand in 3.5 mm size), P-sand (plastering sand in 2.5 mm), and C-sand (concrete sand of 4.5 mm), for construction purposes. It does not include black, white, or other coloured or multicoloured granite.
The retired official said: “The Tamil Nadu government is yet to frame, adopt, notify, and gazette the rules for minor mineral mining. As such, it has technically ceased to execute its power of granting leases and licences for minor minerals. Hence, quarry mining as a whole is rendered illegal under the Mining Act and its Rules. I drew attention to this paradox to the higher judiciary in several cases.”
Durai Murugan, Tamil Nadu Minister for Mines and Minerals, said in the Assembly in the first week of April that the State would constitute a committee to recommend amendments, adding that “some of the rules of Tamil Nadu Minor Mineral Concession Rules were not in line with Central amendments”. Mining rules mandate that the peripheral seam and pit depth should be between 30 and 60 metres for “safe and scientific mining”. But in reality, miners go as far below as 150 to 200 metres, which could cause collapses. In 2022, a few workers were buried alive in a quarry in Tirunelveli district. In 2021, a 19-year-old machine operator in a private quarry in Rakkathanpatti in Pudukottai was buried alive after a cave-in.
Geology experts also argue that measuring excavated rocks in cubic metres has been phased out elsewhere in the world and is faulty under the provisions of the Legal Metrology Act. “It should be measured in tonnes. Cubic metre mainly helps to suppress the real volume of the extracted minerals, thus encouraging corrupt practices,” an official said.
Explosives racket
The procurement of explosives for blasting is another major racket. Mystery shrouds the source of the explosives used in the innumerable illegal quarries. The Explosives Act mandates that only legally permitted quarries, under the Explosives Rules, 2008, will be supplied with a “mandated” quantity of explosives based on the sanctioned volume of extract and location. But this rule, too, remains on paper.
Tamil Nadu falls under the jurisdiction of the Joint Chief Controller of Explosives, South Circle, Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO), who is based in Chennai and primarily responsible for administering the Explosives Act, 1884, governing the manufacture, import, export, transport, possession, sale, and use of explosives.
However, the use of explosives in quarries and mines does not come under the direct purview of PESO. The Directorate General of Mine Safety is the nodal agency for the safety and welfare of miners. It is the local police who are primarily responsible for enforcing the Explosive Substances Act, 1908, and the Explosives Act, 1884, in close coordination with the mining and revenue departments.
Even with these Acts in place, there are large-scale violations in the procurement of explosives, according to sources in the mining department. Even blasting operations are not carried out as per mining protocols, with many accidents reported and many unreported, and cracks appearing in nearby houses and structures. In September 2018, two miners were killed and four others injured in a quarry in Muthudayanpatti in Pudukottai when an explosive was triggered by lightning.
“The miners rarely employ official blasters; amateurs and labourers are used. Even for the 1,900 licensed quarries, less than 500 official blasters are available,” an official said.
Ray of hope
Amid this uncontrolled loot, there is a ray of hope in the form of judicial intervention. As early as 2013, the Madras High Court asked the government to issue strict instructions to District Collectors, police, and other authorities to enforce the provisions of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, the Tamil Nadu Minor Mineral Concession Rules, 1959, and the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Illegal Mining, Transportation and Storage of Minerals and Mineral Dealers’ Rules, 2011. But, after Ali’s murder, when the government once again tried to crack down on illegal operations, the mining cartel—giving an indication of the fallout of any legal scrutiny—unilaterally hiked the price of M-sand and other material and choked supply. The official price of M-sand has jumped to Rs.1,250 a tonne from Rs.650 earlier, while it is sold in the black market at Rs.4,000.
Also Read | Killed on civic duty
As feared, this has impacted the construction industry. Various infrastructural and development works as well as private construction activities are suffering. A quarry owner said: “We are not able to work. Not only are the rules stringent, there is increasing intervention of ‘fake’ environmental activism.”
Durai Guna, an activist against illegal mining, said: “In 2023 too, quarry owners struck work saying they were being harassed by officials and social workers.”
The steep hike in the price of quarry stone and sand has also affected fleet operations. Sella Rajamani, president of the Tamil Nadu Sand Lorry Owners Federation, told Frontline: “The quarry syndicate is holding everyone to ransom. Instead of punishing illegal quarry operators and crushers, the officials harass us. We carry GST-paid bills for consignments. However, we are stopped and our drivers arrested.”
He added: “Nearly 75 per cent of M-sand and other aggregates, of which 80 per cent is illegal, is transported to Kerala from Theni, Coimbatore, and Tiruppur. As quarrying is totally banned in Kerala, the demand there outstrips the supply.”
Nothing, and no one, seems capable of reining in the mining mafia, and the loot continues unabated. While the police and State government officials throw up their hands in seeming helplessness, natural resources are destroyed and activists like Jagabar Ali and R. Jeganathan, who raise their voices in protest, are murdered in cold blood.
