Deputy Commissioner A B Ibrahim has directed the officers concerned to monitor the strict enforcement of an order to check illegal transportation of sand from Dakshina Kannada district to Kerala.
A press release said that unauthorised transportation of sand is prohibited through Dakshina Kannada district to Kerala from any source. The government of Karnataka, in its order dated August 28, 2009, had banned inter-state transportation of sand.
Unlicensed transportation of sand from Dakshina Kannada to Kerala has been going on by creating false and forged documents even after the order by the government of Karnataka for ban and prohibition of transportation of sand to outside the State, said the deputy commissioner. The report from the Department of Commercial Tax and the Department of Mines and Geology to the deputy commissioner of Dakshina Kannada had also confirmed the existence of cases of unauthorised and transportation to Kerala by a few individuals from Dakshina Kannada.
Explaining the cases of unauthorised transportation, Ibrahim said that in order to escape the ban by the State government on sand transportation, some unscrupulous individuals had created fake permits and bills under the names of the governments of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha states. “During the process of verification of the authenticity of the permits issued by other states, it was found that the permits to transport sand had not been issued by the above mentioned state governments. In contrast, during the process of verification of the bills that were handed to the authorities at the time of confiscation, it was found that forged rubber seals had been created to permit unauthorised transportation. The dates mentioned in the bills and the dates of entry to the district also mismatched,” the deputy commissioner said.
Citing an example, the officer said that one bill mentioned the date as January 4, 2016 while the date of entry of the vehicle used to feign transport of sand to the district said January 5, 2016. It would, however, be impossible to reach Dakshina Kannada within a day from Odisha, covering a distance of 1,639 kilometres, he emphasised.
Lack of records
The report of the Joint Commissioner of Commercial Tax said that no record has been made in the bills produced by the transporters of sand with regard to the verification in any of the check posts either at the time of arrival or at the time of exit of the vehicles.
The vehicle numbers were also not mentioned in the vehicle movement register maintained in every check post of the Department of Commercial Tax. Similarly, the TIN numbers shown in the bills do not exist and the phone numbers mentioned in the invoices of said Odisha party are also found to be false. It is also observed that transporting sand from other states like Odisha, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh are not practical and not economically viable, said the report.
