The Central Coordination-cum-Empowered Committee, CEC on monitoring and minimizing delays in grant of approvals for mineral concessions has decided to introduce an end-to-end accounting system for mineral transaction to prevent and detect illegal mining through an All Indian Online System. The Committee under the chairmanship of Secretary, Ministry of Mines, Mr S. Vijay Kumar, has also decided upon an action plan to increase the capacity of state Mining Directorates.

According to an official release, the CEC also stressed upon the need to ensure proper exploration in leasehold areas in a time-bound manner to enable scientific execution of Mining Plans. The Committee has been constituted to review the position regarding various important aspects of the mineral concession regime in the country and bring about more efficiency and transparency in the system.

Some of the other important issues that came up for discussions during the meeting were, action taken to curb illegal mining including use of satellite imagers, plugging loopholes in the royalty collection system and expediting approval including forest clearance cases to clear long pending mineral concession applications. Representatives of various State and Central Ministries and Departments concerned with the issue participated in the meeting.