Survey of mine leases to start next week

Field survey of mines to check possible encroachment of lease boundaries is set to begin next week.

"The field verification process will commence next week. The roadmap for conducting the field survey will be ready on Wednesday or tomorrow and once it is ready, we will notify the roadmap. The concerned district collectors will be apprised and all district officials to be involved in the survey will be given an orientation," said Deepak Mohanty, director (mines).

It may be noted that the mining department had formulated the draft guidelines regarding methodology to carry out physical verification of lease areas. The Shah Commission, probing into illegal mining of iron ore and manganese, had sent it to a team of experts at National Institute of Technology (NIT)-Surathkal to verify the same.

The state government had constituted five teams -" one each for three mining circles in Keonjhar district and two mining circles in Sundergarh district. Each of the teams will have two members each from the departments of revenue, forest and steel & mines. These committees will be headed by a scientist from Odisha Space Application Centre (ORSAC).

These five teams will be supervised by two district level committees headed by the collectors of Sundergarh and Keonjhar districts. Moreover, a state level committee has been formed under D Biswal, additional secretary (forest & environment). The state level committee will have representatives from Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM), Union ministry of environment and forest (MoEF) and Shah Commission. The committee 's responsibility will be to ascertain if a mine owner undertook mining beyond lease area.

During the recent hearing of the Shah probe panel that ended on March 4, the miners held that the panel members superimposed Google images with the revenue map to determine lease area encroachment, which they claimed was not authentic. Similarly, the differential global positioning system (DGPS) map prepared by the state government agency ORSAC was also not up to the mark, the miners argued.

The miners have agreed to pay Rs 4 lakh per sq km to conduct the physical survey in their area.

The lessees had demanded pillar-to-pillar survey of their mining leases instead of satellite images to get accurate information regarding encroachment.