Mangaluru, June 03, 2015: A team of officials of the Department of Mines and Geology led by Deputy Director Ramappa and another officer Nagendrappa raided the illegal quarries at Arasule Padavu near Yekkar in Bajpe police station limits on June 2 and seized five trucks loaded with stones, six cutting machines and several other equipment.
It has been gathered that laterite stone quarries were operating illegally in an area spread over one thousand acres of government as well as some private land in blatant violation of all rules. There have been at least six raids on these quarries in the past when authorities had slapped a penalty of over Rs 10 lakhs on the quarry operators. But all this had proved to be a futile exercise as the quarries used to resume operations within just two days of the raids.
Some time back the locals had complained to the Deputy Commissioner who had instructed the Tahsildar to look into the complaint that the quarry operators had even encroached upon a PWD road and had converted it into a quarry. The visit to the place by the Tahsildar too had yielded no result.
The issue has even been discussed at several ZP meets but of no avail and the allegation is that several of these unauthorised quarries had political backing.