A two-member team of the Justice MB Shah Commission probing the multi-crore mining scam in Odisha would visit the State on May 24 and stay here till May 28. The team would conduct field verification and analyse data pertaining to various mines, where the State Government has already conducted physical verification of the leasehold areas.
Senior officials Biswajeet Mishra and Prasad of the team would begin the five-day tour from May 24, revealed a senior official of the Department of Steel and Mines (DoSM) here. The team would conduct field verification for the first three days, while it would scrutinise all the data at the Odisha Space Application Centre (ORSAC) laboratory here for last two days of their visit, informed the officials.
Notably, several lessees during their meeting with the Shah panel earlier had doubted the accuracy in demarcation of mining boundaries by the use of Differential Geographical Positioning System (DGPS). Various mining companies had argued that the DGPS map prepared by the State Government using the Google Earth Image and based on the figures of the Base Map prepared manually way back in the 1960s was not correct.
Accordingly, the Shah Commission during its hearing in February last had decided physical verification of 44 leasehold areas afresh, said official sources.
Notably, the DoSM has constituted five teams for physical verification of the mines. Till date, the physical verification of 19 mines is complete, while data analysis of the mines and field verification of another five mines are going on, said a senior official.