Jajpur: After a lull, illegal quarrying of black stone has resumed in Dankari hill under Dharmasala tehsil in this district due to lack of action from the district administration, a report said.
The matter came to the fore after revenue inspector Manoj Samal filed a report alleging resumption of black stone quarrying in the hill a few months back.
In his report, Samal alleged Rabi Das of Dankari village, Kuna Prusty of Chadheidhara village and Swaroopananda Das of Najichowki Chhack in Dhenkanal district are illegally extracting black stones and transporting it for sale to various locations.
Reports said Dharmasala tehsildar on the basis of a report on illegal black stone quarrying by the revenue inspector had advised Jenapur police to initiate legal action against three persons for the wrongdoing December 21, last year.
However, Jenapur police are yet to take action against the wrongdoers although a month has passed. The tehsildar has stopped taking follow-up action which has emboldened the miners.
Reports claimed attempts are being made to hush up the matter. Illegal quarrying of black stone from the Dankari hill dates back to 2002 when miners had illegally extracted large quantities of black stone from the hills sans environmental clearance.
The then Dharmasala tehsildar issued a demand notice of Rs 58,62,79,633 to the miners asking them to deposit the money in government exchequer towards mineral loot. Directed by the District Collector, the tehsildar in a letter (1878, dated May 28, 2016) asked leaseholder Sribatsha Jena to deposit the money.
Then Collector Satya Kumar Mallick in a letter (5547, dated December 3, 2015) also directed the deputy director, mines, Jajpur Road to form a special team comprising revenue and mines officials and make an assessment of the actual revenue loss and other losses to the government.
The team visited the hill site in the second week of January, 2016. The mines department submitted its report to the Collector.
The report said around 73,38,022.50 cubic meter of area on the hill has been excavated for quarrying of black stones. Reports said Jena had extracted black stones from the hill from the period starting from November 2002 till 2015.
During this period, Jena had deposited only Rs 6, 64,89, 908 crore as revenue towards extraction of black stones to the tune of 14,15,996 cubic meter on the hill.
He had evaded depositing revenue on the rest of 59,22,0165 cubic meter of area on the hill from which he had extracted black stones. The mines department had estimated that Jena had defrauded the state exchequer of Rs 58,62,79,633 cr if Rs 99 is the revenue per cubic meter.
The matter is sub-judice. Since then, 17 tehsildars have been appointed in the Dharmasala tehsil but none has cared to recover the revenue from Jena.
Later, then Jajpur Collector and principal secretary, revenue and disaster management department published a notification under Section-15 of the Orissa Civil Services Act directing a probe against 10 revenue inspectors and 10 tehsildars for conniving with the leaseholders in the loot.
However, that also failed to make progress.
When contacted, Dharmasala tehsildar Prasant Samantray said necessary steps will be taken in this regard.
PNN