Mining Surveillance System 

The Union Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy and Mines, Piyush Goyal, launched the Mining Surveillance System (MSS) in New Delhi on October 15. MSS is a satellite-based monitoring system which aims to establish a regime of responsive mineral administration, through public participation, by curbing instances of illegal mining activity through automatic remote sensing detection technology.

There are in total 3843 mining leases of major minerals in India. Out of which, there are 1710 working mines and 2133 non-working mines. Most of the working mines have been digitized. Efforts for completing the digitization of non-working mines are being made through the State Governments, which would be completed in 3 months’ time.

Developed under the Digital India Programme, MSS is one of the first such surveillance systems developed in the world using space technology. The current system of monitoring of illegal mining activity is based on local complaints and unconfirmed information. There is no robust mechanism to monitor the action taken on such complaints.

Following PM’s vision, the Khasra maps of the mining leases have been geo-referenced. The geo-referenced mining leases are superimposed on the latest satellite remote sensing scenes obtained from CARTOSAT & USGS. An executive dashboard has been designed under MSS to work as a decision support system.

Using this dashboard, officials can track the current status of mapping of the mining leases, reasons for triggers, the status of inspections related to triggers generated, the penalty levied etc. The advantages of remote sensing technology based monitoring system are that it is transparent, bias-free and independent; deterrence effect and assures quicker response and action.