As part of its efforts to check illegal movement of ores through unified checkgates at the border areas, the state steel & mines department has decided that the personnel manning these checkgates would collect the transit pass from the mineral carrying vehicles.
The border checkgates are manned by personnel of finance, forest & environment and commerce & transport departments. State steel & mines secretary, Manoj Ahuja, has written to the secretaries of the concerned departments for issuing the necessary instructions to put the new system in place with immediate effect.
As per the new system, the transit pass will be collected at the time when a vehicle crosses the inter-state border. In turn, the deputy director of mines or mining officers in whose mining circle the checkgate is located will have the responsibility of collecting the transit passes on a weekly basis from the checkposts. Thereafter, they would segregate the transit passes circle wise and send them to the mining circle from which the ore was being despatched for cross verification.
There are unified checkgates at borders of Orissa with other states through which there is movement of mineral traffic. Some of these inter-state gates are Girisola (Orissa-Andhra Pradesh border), Jamasola (Orissa-West Bengal border) and Birmitrapur (Orissa-Jharkhand) border. Similarly, another checkgate is located at Murgabeda in Keonjhar district.
At a recent meeting of the State Level Enforcement Squad on Mining chaired by the state Chief Secretary B K Patnaik, it was decided to deploy mining officers at the check gates at the border areas to prevent illegal mining activities.
However, due to shortage of adequate manpower with the mines department, it is not in a position to immediately deploy personnel at all such checkgates.
It has also been decided to modernize 12 check gates at the different mining areas which is expected to be done within 12 months. Initially, 4-5 check gates in locations like Joda and Paradip will be modernized within two months. These check gates would be connected with the mining directorate offices.
