Mangaluru, Jan 14: Dakshina Kannada Deputy Commissioner A B Ibrahim has issued an order prohibiting transportation of sand from any source, including other States, through Dakshina Kannada to other States, including neighbouring Kerala.
Sand transporters are masquerading their illegal act by fabricating fake invoices purported to have been issued in other States to transport sand from Dakshina Kannada or Karnataka to Kerala, he felt.
Mr. Ibrahim, while passing the order, noted that the State government had already banned inter-State sand transportation in 2009. He directed the officials concerned to keep strict vigil in the district and prevent all kinds of illegal stand transportation to Kerala.
Mr. Ibrahim has, in the order, quoted an incident reported on January 6 wherein a Hubballi-registered truck transporting sand to Kerala was intercepted at Talapady, Karnataka-Kerala border, by the Commercial Tax Department personnel.
On inspection by the personnel, the driver was found to be in possession of a sales invoice issued on January 5 at Berhampur, Odisha, for transportation of sand to Kerala. Consequently, the truck was seized and action initiated. Similar incidents were reported earlier too. Hence the order, he said.
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.
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Really appreciated and Bold decision. D. C. Saheb Salute for you
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