Union Minister of Coal, Railways, Finance & Corporate Affairs, Piyush Goyal launched the Coal Mine Surveillance & Management System (CMSMS) and mobile application Khan Prahari developed by CMPDI Ranchi.
The Minister said that Ministry of Coal has taken a major initiative in this direction by developing a Web GIS application called ‘Coal Mine Surveillance & Management System (CMSMS) and a mobile app called ‘Khan Prahari’. The Minister also said that this was a step towards utilizing space science for peaceful activities.
The basic objective of CMSMS is reporting, monitoring and taking suitable action on unauthorised coal mining activities. The CMSMS is a web based GIS application through which location of sites for unauthorised mining can be detected. The basic platform used in the system is of Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology’s (MeiTY) map which provides village level information. The leasehold boundary of all the coal mines are displayed on this map.
The system will use satellite data to detect changes by which unauthorised mining activity extending beyond the allotted lease area can be detected and suitable action can be taken on it.
The complaint originating from coal mines allotted to Coal India will go to Coal India Offices and those originating from coal blocks not allotted to Coal India will go straight to the state government officers and for each complaint the alert will also go to the district magistrate and SP of the district.
Khan Prahari is a tool for reporting any activity taking place related to illegal coal mining like rat hole mining, pilferage etc. One can upload geo-tagged photographs of the incident along with textual information directly to the system. Hence, both satellite data and human information will be used to capture information on the unauthorised mining activities.
Once reported, the information will be automatically directed to the nodal officers to take suitable action on those activities. The complainant can also track his complaint through the system. The identity of the complainant shall not be revealed. This app can easily be downloaded in Android and iOS.
