KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – India’s satellite-based Mining Surveillance System (MSS), launched in 2016, has been “very successful” in triggering alerts on possible illegal mining across the country, the Mines Ministry has said in a paper prepared on illegal mining.
The Mines Ministry states that the system, operated by the Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM), has trigged 296 alerts on possible illegal mining across 3 994 ha since its launch in October 2016. Of these, 198 cases were investigated and reports submitted to local authorities for follow-up action.
According to an IBM official, the Mines Ministry is likely to aim to extend the MSS to also cover minor minerals, now that the efficacy of the system in tracking illegal mining of major minerals has been confirmed.
He said that IBM would hold a series of consultation meetings with mineral-bearing provinces, as legal governance of minor minerals fell under the latter’s jurisdiction.
Minor minerals expected to be put under MSS include sand, granite, stone quarrying, gravel and ordinary clay.
The Ministry paper states that the highest number of MSS triggers for possible illegal mining came in the central province of Madhya Pradesh (45), followed by Goa (42), Karnataka (35), Gujarat (32), Tamil Nadu (29), Rajasthan (23) and Odisha (20).
The government data shows that between April and September 2015/16, 48 467 cases of illegal mining of major and minor minerals have been registered, compared with 97 149 cases in the previous year.
Under MSS, cadastral maps of all mining leases for all major minerals have been digitised and superimposed on the latest satellite remote sensing scenes obtained from the National Remote Sensing Center (NRSC). This system then checks an area of 500 m around the existing mining lease boundaries searching for any activity beyond the lease hold area, which that could indicate illegal mining operations.
Should suspicious activity be detected, the zone of such activity is immediately flagged, triggers are sent to the NRSC and information is sent to local authorities on a real time basis to initiate action at the ground.
The Ministry official acknowledged that although cases of illegal mining of major minerals had been on the decline following stringent monitoring, illegal mining of minor minerals, particularly sand mining, have been on the rise. Illegal sand mining has assumed alarming proportions, involving abductions, killings and ransom and even being raised several times in the Indian Parliament, he said.
However, extending MSS to cover minor minerals by the provincial governments would be a challenge and the provinces did not have the expertise to complete cadastral mapping of all mining leases of minor minerals, as most of them were too fragmented to convert them into digital format. As this would be the most important pre-requisite to link such data with the NRSC the moot point remained whether the provinces would be able to make such investments on mapping the mines, the official added.