Bhubaneswar, April 27: In a bid to dispel the impression that the ruling regime had any role to play in the multi-crore mining scam, the state government has initiated a series of steps to curb illegal mining.

The state-level task force, under the chairmanship of chief secretary Bijay Patnaik, today met and decided to constitute a committee that would monitor and regulate extraction of minerals by mine owners “on a daily basis”.

Chief minister Naveen Patnaik had reviewed the mining activities on April 23 and April 25 following which several measures were announced.

It has been alleged that the mine owners, who are in league with politicians and those in the administration, have extracted minerals worth over Rs 10,000 crore illegally without paying royalty to the state government. Though the government had taken action against nearly eight officials and stopped operations in over 161 mines, there had been allegations that it was not serious in its efforts to curb illegal mining.

The matter is pending before the high court and there had been petitions seeking a CBI probe into the scam. The high court had reserved its verdict on the matter.

After the task-force meeting Patnaik said: “The proposed committee will decide how much minerals will be mined from which mine.”

Stating that the mining operation should not be undertaken indiscriminately without planning, Patnaik said an yearly planning would be made taking into account the environmental aspect, available infrastructure facilities, transport capacity and requirement of end-users apart from the market demand.

The committee, which would have officials from the Indian Bureau of Mines, ports, railway, State Pollution Control Board, state departments of mines and representatives of end-users, would study various aspects, including the availability of infrastructure and requirement of mineral production, he said.

“We will be able to regulate production if we come to know beforehand the infrastructure facilities existing in the mining belt,” said steel and mines secretary Manoj Ahuja.

Earlier, the government had decided to make the registration of ore-carrying vehicles with the mines department mandatory. Radio frequency identification devices will be fitted with these vehicles to keep track on the movement of minerals.

Ports had been asked to furnish details on export of minerals transported from Orissa. So far, only authorities of the Paradip Port Trust have furnished details of ore export. They informed that nine to 10 million tonnes of iron ore had been exported through the port during 2010-11.

However, informations from Haldia and Vishakhapatnam ports were not available. “The state government will request the shipping ministry to ask the Haldia and Vishakhapatnam port authorities to furnish the required data,” Ahuja said.

Commercial tax department officials were asked to cross-check with the details furnished by the mines operators on the payment of sales tax and value added tax.

In order to regulate transportation of minerals, it was decided to replace the manual transit passes with those carrying 3-D automated holograms, said Ahuja.

The state-level enforcement squad has been given specific targets to conduct site inspection before recommending for renewal of mining lease.

With the mining scam pending in the court and the threat of a CBI probe looming large, the state government has apparently become pro-active on the issue.