BJP legislators meet CM over shortage of sand, laterite stones in Dakshina Kannada

BJP legislators meet CM over shortage of sand, laterite stones in Dakshina Kannada

Mangalore Today News Network

Bengaluru, July 31, 2025: A delegation of BJP legislators from Dakshina Kannada met Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in Bengaluru on Wednesday and appealed to him to find a solution to “the dearth of laterite stones and sand” in the district.

In a letter submitted to the Chief Minister, the legislators claimed that the extraction of laterite stones in the district has come to a standstill due to the stringent rules of the Department of Mines and Geology. Sand is not available to people in enough quantity due to the unscientific sand policy of the government.

Hence construction works have been hit and labourers do not have jobs, the MLAs and MLCs said.

They said that quarry owners in the State who extract laterite stones will have to pay ₹256 per tonne as royalty to the government, which is significantly higher than the ₹32 royalty per tonne fixed by the Kerala government. 

Karnataka government should keep the provision of issuing licences to extract laterite stones out of the purview of the Department of Mines and Geology, they demanded, stressing the need to relax rules to allow quarry owners to resume quarrying of red stones. 

They demanded that the government should come out with a separate sand policy for the coastal belt. The local bodies, including gram panchayats, should be entrusted with the powers of issuing licences for extracting sand from rivers, streams and rivulets. The taluk-level sand management committees should be vested with the powers of identifying sand blocks for allowing sand extraction.

The delegation comprised MP Capt. Brijesh Chowta, MLAs Umanath Kotiyan, D. Vedavyasa Kamath, Y. Bharat Shetty, U. Rajesh Naik, Harish Poonja, Bhagirathi Murulya, and MLCs K. Prathapsimha Nayak and Kishore Kumar Puttur. 

Satish Kumpala, president, Dakshina Kannada unit of the BJP, also accompanied them.

The delegation later met Sameer Shukla, Secretary, Department of Mines and Geology and appealed to him to take appropriate measures to make sand and laterite stones available to the people.