BHUBANESWAR: The State Government has decided to go for mapping minor mineral sources, including sand and stone quarries, to check illegal mining. The mapping will be done through Odisha Space Applications Centre (ORSAC) to ascertain the quantity of deposits and lifting of minerals on real-time basis. At a recent review meeting, Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Maheswar Mohanty called upon the officials to ensure that minor minerals used in developmental projects are drawn from authorised sources.
“From now onwards bill documents will mention that the contractors are required to lift materials only from authorised sources and they will certify it. No bill will be passed without obtaining the certificates,” said a revenue official.
It was alleged that the project proponents or contractors had been using minor minerals drawn from unauthorised sources for which Government was losing huge amount of revenue towards royalty.
Not only minor mineral, illegal stone mining is also rampant in the State and the crusher units are major end users of illegally lifted and transported stones from unauthorised sources. Of 317 tehsils CCTVs have been installed in 307 and bio-metric device in 219 tehsils, the rest tehsils will be under CCTV surveillance and bio-metric enabled by October 15.
“About `16.5 crore has been placed for purchase of computer and IT accessories for tehsil office. It has been decided that all tehsil offices will be supplied with computers by October 15,” said the official.
While priority has been on filling up vacant posts, 30 digital display board will be installed in all district headquarters and all tehsils and RI offices will be connected with 2 MBPS internet connection.
Officials dealing with pension and proceeding matters have been asked to follow up computerisation of all pending cases to avoid any paper work as they will be completely paperless work after October 12.
Since the process of SMS integration, which will help send online mutation notice through a software developed by NIC, has already been completed Revenue Secretary CS Kumar has asked officials to ensure delivery of patta through post on payment of requisite fee.
Meanwhile, the DG of Police has been urged for deployment of armed police force in 10 sensitive tehsils in the State by October 15 for checking of illegal mining of minor minerals.