VV Minerals chairman Vaikundarajan under scanner for illegal mining to the tune of Rs 96k crore
CHENNAI: When Tuticorin collector Ashish Kumar raised the issue of illegal mining of beach sand last month, the spotlight quickly turned on him, as the state government immediately transferred Kumar while also announcing an investigation into his allegations. But there has been only fleeting attention towards the man behind VV Minerals, the company Kumar had accused of illegal mining.
One month on, with the result of the investigations awaited, the focus has finally shifted to S Vaikundarajan, the low-profile chairman and managing director of VV Minerals, India's top exporter of industrial minerals garnet and ilmenite. There are two main reasons for this.
One, critics such as former IAS officer V Sundaram accuse Vaikundarajan, 58, of engaging in illegal mining to the tune of Rs 96,000 crore and more in the last decade. That's more than two-thirds of the state's accumulated debt. Two, the mining baron's perceived closeness to power.
Vaikundarajan's loyalists have blamed business rivals for such allegations. Vaikundarajan's spokesman could not be reached for this story.
The political class, save for the Communists, has largely kept mum on this issue. The Left parties (they are part of the alliance headed by the ruling AIADMK) have even criticised the government probe for limiting its purview to Tuticorin, where only a minor part of the illegal mining takes place.
Sundaram says "Vaikundology" (a pun on the baron's name and geology) is a huge problem. He has been sending letters since January 2013, much before the Kumar expose, to everyone from the industries secretary to the chief secretary, CBI director, Central Vigilance Commissioner and even the chairman of Atomic Energy Commission.
Sundaram says he hasn't received even an acknowledgement from any of them. G Victor Rajamanickam, the mineralogist who worked with Sundaram, says, "We have taken into account the legally authorised tonnage they are allowed to mine and the transport permits they have applied for over 10 years. The transport permits exceed the production capacity."
Vaikundarajan, based out of Tisayanvilai town in Tirunelveli district in south Tamil Nadu, is someone who keeps out of the media glare. People who know him say he's comfortable in his shirt-veshti (dhoti). So reclusive is he that there are no publicly-available photographs of the man. He is self-made, but there are scant details about how he built his business, or his family. He is no stranger to controversy, though. One of the ongoing cases against him, filed by rival businessman D Dhaya Devadas, is based on an allegation that Vaikundarajanopenly admitted at a meeting of the ore panel that he bribed officials to get environmental clearance for beach sand mining in Tuticorin.
What adds to the interest in Vaikundarajan is the fact that he is a shareholder in Mavis Satcom, the company that runs Jaya TV, the AIADMK mouthpiece. In fact, the party, when it was in the opposition in 2007, had fumed at the DMK for harassing him.
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