He also ordered the shunt out of several officials, pending the investigation, an official spokesperson said.
While SDM Paramdeep Singh was asked to report to the chief secretary's office, DSP P S Bal and SHO Pawan Kumar were shifted to the police lines, the spokesperson said.
The alleged nexus came to the fore in the wake of the crackdown ordered by the chief minister after he spotted illegal mining activity while flying over Nawanshahr and Jalandhar districts on Tuesday, the spokesperson said.
The directive came during a meeting, convened by the chief minister, of the deputy commissioners and SSPs of 14 districts where mining takes place in the state.
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Instructing the officials not to brook any political interference in these investigations, Singh said they should catch the owners and the bidders and not confine the action in illegal mining cases to merely the small fry, such as contractors and drivers.
The government, he said, would address all shortcomings in the existing Mining Policy to bring illegal mining to an end and herald a new era in the state.
The officials came out with various suggestions to streamline and strengthen the mining processes. These included GPS tracking of the tippers (trucks), scientific demarcation of the mining sites with proper coordinates, besides installation of WiFi enabled CCTVs at all sensitive check points for monitoring the movement of the vehicles.
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