Udupi: Deputy Commissioner Priyanka Mary Francis said on Tuesday that the district administration had set a deadline of December 17 to those who had applied for permits to remove excess sand in the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) areas to collect their permits and start removing the excess sand immediately.

Ms. Francis said told reporters here that if the permit holders did not do so, the administration will cancel their permits and they will not get the permits again in their lifetime. “They cannot put people into trouble by not providing sand even after the permits are ready and waiting to be collected,” she said.

Ms. Francis said as many as 37 people had paid royalty for the permits for removing sand in the CRZ areas. Of them, only five or six persons had taken the permits, but even they had not started removing sand.

The administration had learnt that other applicants were not allowing them to take the permits as they wanted all previous 170 permit holders to be given permits. Last year, the applicants took the permits as soon as they were issued and started removing the excess sand, she said.

To a query, Ms. Francis said the applicants could not issue diktats on the issuance of permits. After all they were the ones who had said that lack of sand was causing hardships to people.

“Some applicants said they were frightened to start removing sand as the other applicants had warned them against it. But they are not ready to give it in writing. If they face any threat and seek police protection, we are ready to provide it,” she said.

On the allegation of local MLA Raghupati Bhat that the administration was needlessly seeking clarifications from the Union government, she said as per the government notification, the seven-member District Sand Monitoring Committee should decide who should be given permits. The committee decided that those who had permits before 2011 belonged to “traditional community” and were eligible to apply. But this was opposed here, hence she was left with no alternative but to seek clarifications from the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, Ms. Francis said.