Supreme refuses Stay on Red Sandal Auction!

In what could be a breather to Andhra Pradesh government, Supreme court today refused to issue ‘Stay’ on the auctioning of Red Sandal by Andhra Pradesh. The court issued notices to AP government and the Center on this issue and posted the next hearing to December 5th. With Supreme refusing to give a Stay, the auction will proceed as planned from coming Monday.

Andhra Pradesh government has got permission to auction 8500 tonnes of Red Sandal but AP is only auction 4000 tonnes currently. The red sandal logs are divided in to three grades with the least grade costing 10 Lakhs per ton.Chandra Babu Naidu’s government had pinned high hopes on this auction to get as many funds as possible for the loan waiver scheme.

Several domestic and international companies are very interested to participate in this auction as this rare timber is found only in Andhra Pradesh and also has high demand in international market.