Quartz revenue claim puts Nellore mining under a fresh political spotlight

Quartz mining in SPSR Nellore district came under renewed scrutiny on Sunday after former minister and YSRCP political affairs committee member P. Anil Kumar Yadav levelled a series of allegations about mining collections, lease operations and state revenue. The claims were made at a media conference in Nellore and have not been independently established by Praja Hakku.

Yadav claimed that government revenue from quartz, which he said had been around ₹55 crore during the previous administration, had fallen to roughly ₹12 crore under the present government. He also alleged that illegal collections ranging from ₹8,000 to ₹15,000 a tonne were being made and asserted that the value of such collections over two years exceeded ₹200 crore. Those figures come from his political statement and should not be read as audited losses or proven proceeds.

He further referred to 147 quartz leases, saying 98 were operating and 49 had been shut. The existence and status of individual leases can in principle be checked against mining department records, lease files, production returns, e-permits, transport challans and royalty payments. That is the documentary trail needed to test the central allegation: whether legal production and state revenue have diverged because of lower output, altered market conditions, enforcement decisions, non-working leases or unauthorised extraction and dispatch.

The strongest way to examine the issue is not through competing press conferences. District mining authorities can publish the lease-wise picture for the two comparable periods: sanctioned area, mineral quantity reported, dispatch permits generated, royalty and other statutory payments received, inspections conducted, violations booked, machinery seized and penalties collected. If revenue fell, the department should explain why. If it did not fall in the manner alleged, the official numbers should settle that too.

Yadav’s allegation of per-tonne illegal collections also requires a different kind of evidence. Investigators would need complainants, payment trails, messages, call records, statements from leaseholders or transporters and proof connecting any demand to identifiable persons. A political accusation, however specific, is not enough by itself to attribute criminal conduct.

No same-day detailed response from the persons targeted by the allegations was located in the material reviewed before this edition closed. Their response, and the mining department’s data, should be carried when available.

For now, Sunday’s news is that a former minister has put precise figures into the public domain and challenged the government’s handling of the quartz sector. The public-interest question is therefore measurable: what did the mines produce, what left the district legally, what did the exchequer receive, and what enforcement action was taken? Those records can turn a political charge into either a documented case or a claim that does not survive verification.