The high court had in January, 2016, appointed advocate V Suresh as amicus curiae to assist it in the case.
Suresh filed a memo today before the first bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan, seeking some documents, including the report forwarded to the government by the collector after inspecting areas leased out for mining in the district, when a suo motu PIL came up before it.
Earlier, the high court had dismissed a PIL alleging that rare earth beach minerals worth over Rs one lakh crore had been plundered by some private companies in Tamil Nadu and that the government had allowed a Tuticorin-based firm and others to export 4.55 lakh metric tonnes of placer minerals like garnet, radioactive monazite, zircon, leucoxene and sillimanite by modifying 16 existing mining leases without any reference to the Centre.
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The Bench, which passed an interim order, directed the government to make available the report. It also granted leave to amicus curie to inspect all records so he may categorise the matters dependent on the prayers made.
Additional Solicitor General G Rajagopalan submitted that the Centre alone has the right to grant permission for monazite mining and that as a policy, no such permission was being granted.