Consignment to be exported to the Maldives The move to export granite from Kozhikode and Malappuram districts to the Maldives via Beypore port has come in for criticism from various green movements and the Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad. They have jointly submitted a complaint to District Collector N. Prasanth urging him to look into the issue and stop the move considering its environmental implications. A private shipping company has been procuring truckloads of granite boulders from the two districts and loading them to a barge docked at the port during the last several days for construction work in the Maldives. The environment protection groups alleged that the shipping company was procuring granite without the mandatory sanctions and proper documents from various departments. The panchayats from where the granites were quarried had been included in the biodiversity register of the districts and shipping of any natural resource from these regions required permission from the biodiversity board and the State authorities. “But the board is learnt to have given no such permission yet,” said Manalil Mohanan, State working committee member of the KSSP. With the natural resources being steadily overexploited, the State was already facing an acute shortage of construction materials, including granite and sand, he said. “A sanction to export granite only with an eye on profit would have far-reaching environmental consequences for the region,” he said. “The move is illegal and shrouded in mystery and should not be allowed,” said T.V. Rajan, secretary of the Parakrithi Samrakshana Samithi, based on whose complaint the Collector sought a report from Beypore port officer K. Ashwini Prathap. The port officer, in his report, however made it clear that the granite loads reached the port with mandatory certificates from the Mining and Geology Department and the shipping company had also secured customs clearance for the consignment. “We were mainly looking at it from a revenue perspective,” he said. The barge loaded with around 2,500 tonnes of granite boulders is yet to be given final sanction to leave the port for the Maldives. The environmentalists are planning to take out a march and other forms of protest against the move in front of the district collectorate on Thursday.