Naam Tami­lar Katchi leader Sen­thamizhan See­man, re­cently, in a strong protest, at­tended by thou­sands of peo­ple at Thakkalai in Kanyaku­mari chided the Tamil Nadu gov­ern­ment for its fail­ure to take ac­tion against il­le­gal quar­ry­ing at the West­ern Ghats and the un­law­ful trans­porta­tion of min­eral re­sources to Ker­ala to en­able in­dus­tri­al­ist Adani to build a sea­port at Vizhin­jam. WSN re­ports.

Amidst over­whelm­ing cheers and ap­plause from the par­tic­i­pants at the protest in Kanyaku­mari, NTK leader See­man, in his typ­i­cal style, warned the Tamil Nadu gov­ern­ment to stop Ker­ala from il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, al­leg­ing that the loot was tak­ing place to pla­cate and sup­port in­dus­tri­al­ist Adani’s build­ing of a sea­port at Vizhin­jam.

“We have noth­ing against uti­liz­ing the gravel pits, but quar­ry­ing the moun­tains is a dan­ger­ous trend. This act will turn the land into a desert. Hence, as a re­spon­si­ble gov­ern­ment, the nat­ural re­sources must be safe­guarded and handed over to the next gen­er­a­tion in all its glory and wealth.”

Why is the Ker­ala gov­ern­ment not quar­ry­ing their own moun­tains, uti­liz­ing their own re­sources and hand­ing them over to Adani to build the sea­port? Is it that Ker­ala’s re­sources should stay in­tact and the re­sources of Tamil Nadu should be de­stroyed, asked the NTK leader See­man call­ing for a more de­ter­mined strug­gle to stop the loot. 

“We aren’t fools to sit and watch this plun­der­ing hap­pen in front of our own eyes. Tamil­nadu’s sand re­sources have al­ready been de­pleted to the hilt from the river beds of Tamirab­ha­rani, Palaru and oth­ers. This ex­ploita­tion was sys­tem­at­i­cally done by Andhra Pradesh and Kar­nataka. Now, Adani is build­ing a sea­port in Vizhin­jam and a port at Kat­tupalli. We will not tol­er­ate it, said See­man.

“Is it Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mod­i’s prime duty to work for the in­ter­est of Adani rather than of the coun­try?”

The moun­tains of the West­ern Ghats are a gift of na­ture and we, hu­man be­ings have no right to de­stroy things not cre­ated by us. The Tamil Nadu gov­ern­ment must im­me­di­ately stop the de­mo­li­tion of our moun­tains and the smug­gling of sand from them.

“Is it Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mod­i’s prime duty to work for the in­ter­est of Adani rather than of the coun­try?”

The Tamil Nadu gov­ern­ment must in­ter­vene and stop the smug­gling ac­tiv­i­ties of min­eral re­sources that were quar­ried in the moun­tains of West­ern Ghats, Kanyaku­mari. 

See­man re­minded the Tamil Nadu gov­ern­ment that he had warned the state gov­ern­ment on 22 July and 3 Au­gust, but the au­thor­i­ties failed to act. The protest saw slo­ga­neer­ing to pro­tect the nat­ural re­sources of Tamil Nadu, with party cadres from across the state tak­ing a pledge to protest the smug­gling of scarce Tamil Nadu re­sources to Ker­ala. 

In a re­ply to a sec­tion of the me­dia, See­man said, “I have said many times that noth­ing is go­ing to hap­pen. They have sold air­ports and ports to the pri­vate sec­tor and that is how Adani is cur­rently build­ing the port in Vizhin­jam. 21,000-crore worth of drugs have been smug­gled into the Adani Port in Gu­jarat and no one will talk about it be­cause this coun­try is be­ing ruled by big pri­vate play­ers like Adani. This is my coun­try and they have brought in for­eign in­vest­ment into the de­fence sec­tor as well, for procur­ing mil­i­tary equip­ment.”

Pok­ing fun at the Con­gress for ques­tion­ing the Con­gress par­ty’s protest of his re­marks on MGN­REGA, See­man re­buked them say­ing, “That’s good news. Ini­tially, I started by cam­paign­ing and fight­ing against the Con­gress in 2008-2009 in the back­drop of the Sri Lanka war and now they are fight­ing against me. Times have changed.” 

“I started by cam­paign­ing and fight­ing against the Con­gress in 2008-2009 in the back­drop of the Sri Lanka war and now they are fight­ing against me. Times have changed.” 

It is time to re­alise be­fore it is too late that the wealth of a coun­try de­pends on the land re­sources that the coun­try pos­sesses; the land re­sources, in turn, de­pend on the wa­ter re­sources. Like­wise, wa­ter re­sources de­pend on the rich­ness of the moun­tains that a coun­try pos­sesses.”