A  total of 340 cases of illegal mining has been reported in Karnataka from 2004-05 till date and the value of illegal mining detected throughout the country from 2005 onwards was Rs 97.39 crore, Union Minister of State for Mining T Subbirami Reddy stated in Lok Sabha, triggering off a verbal clash with BJP’s Ananth Kumar.

The minister said that state governments detected 69,003 cases of illegal mining for the period July 2005-June 2007. Out of the detected cases, the states have filed 12,780 court cases and realised Rs 137.27 crore as fine.

Misleading
The Bangalore South MP countered the statement claiming that the answers were misleading and that there was no correlation between the statements.

He charged that while the minister said that the value of illegal mining was only a paltry sum of Rs 97.39 crore, the penalty that was levied and realised was Rs 137.27 crore.

The minister said while the first part of his answer was related to illegal mining, the second part was about illegal mining of all minerals.

However, as Kumar maintained that the question raised was only about illegal iron ore mining and that the minister should come clean on facts and figures, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee asked Reddy to elicit clarification from the BJP member.