Chennai, April 22 (BPNS)
Environmentalists and Social Activists of South Tamil Nadu are up in arms against the police turning a blind eye toward trucks overloaded with minerals. The activists are sore that the Motor Vehicles (Amendment )Act 1988 is not implemented in the case of trucks overloaded with minerals thus bringing huge losses to the state exchequer.
Sudhakaran Raja, an activist at Tenkasi district in South Tamil Nadu while speaking to BPNS said,” The police seems to have turned their back towards the trucks overloaded with minerals and moving to neighbouring Kerala state. The trucks that are overloaded should be penalized and a minimum fine of Rs 20,000 has to be collected and an additional Rs 2000 per extra tonne also levied as fine. However, the policemen are just penalizing them with Rs 2000 as per the old clause of the Motor Vehicles Act.”
The social activists also said that for argument’s sake, police are implementing proper fines for drunken driving according to the amended Act. An amount of Rs 10,000 is levied as fine which is on the basis of the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act 1988.
An activist who does not wants to be named told BPNS that from Tenkasi district alone 1000 trucks are plying to Kerala and most of them are overloaded with minerals. Instead of a minimum fine of Rs 20,000, the policemen are collecting Rs 2000 as fine and that means a minimum loss of Rs 18000 per truck.
The activist said that the state government is losing huge money by way of fines and added that corruption at the highest level of police is taking place regarding transportation of minerals from the state.
Former MLA, Raviarunan also said that the police is highly in favour of mineral transporters and that the state government is losing heavily on this. He said that he had already petitioned the Chief Minister, M.K. Stalin on this huge corruption taking place at the police level in South Tamil Nadu, especially the Tenkasi district.
However senior police officers told BPNS that they are yet to receive any intimation from the state government to collect a fine according to the Amended Motor Vehicles Act.
N. Raghavan of the Environmental group, Sraddha while speaking to BPNS said, “ There is corruption in the transport of minerals and also during loading, it and political parties and police are hand in glove in this, The state is losing heavily but the police don’t care and our concern is that there is an environmental violation in the transport of each truck and we are planning a series of public protests against this.”
