Tamil Nadu: The north-east monsoon, 50 per cent in excess in the State, claims over 200 lives and destroys crops and infrastructure. A SERIES of weather systems, including a cyclone that missed Chennai narrowly, saw the skies open up over Tamil Nadu between November 4 and December 5, the period when the north-east monsoon is most active. Most of the 561 mm of rainfall that the State received between October 1 and December 6, which is 50 per cent over the normal of 375 mm for the season, is said to have come during this period. It claimed the lives of 203 persons, including scores of children. In these days of specialised disaster management, this is seen as an unacceptably high toll. Officials say the deaths occurred from viral fever, electrocution, collapse of walls and roofs of mud houses, lightning strikes and flash floods in jungle streams or on causeways. But what they do not reveal is how many of these 203 persons drowned in deep pits dug by machines engaged in sand quarrying on riverbeds. The Palar, the Cheyyar, the Kosasthalayar, the Kedilam, the Vellar, the Then Pennaiyar, the Kollidam and the Tamiraparani are some of the rivers on which this illegal activity takes place. On November 6, Ajay (10) and Vijay (15) drowned in the Palar river near Vayalur, close to Kalpakkam in Kancheepuram district. Ajay died on the way to hospital after he was rescued from the water. The body of Vijay could not be found. The same day, two brothers, Azaruddin (17) and Ziauddin (12), drowned in the Palar near Arcot town in Vellore district when they went to bathe in the river. The Vellore district administration had issued warnings asking people not to wade into the Palar as the swollen river had made it impossible to detect the huge pits created by quarrying near Devadanam and Periapettai villages. On December 2, the Tamil language newspaper Dina Thanthi had a picture of a lorry lying on its side on the bed of the Cheyyar river at Kambarajapuram near Wallajahbad in Kancheepuram district. The lorry had reached the riverbed to be loaded with sand. The issue came into sharp focus when a Madras High Court Bench, on December 2, banned sand quarrying on the entire stretch of the Tamiraparani river in Tirunelveli and Tuticorin districts. The Bench observed that the river had been