Getting more out of ore

Thanks to a software to track the mining process end to end, Odisha has been able to put a stop to illegal mining

Sitting in his office in Bhubaneswar, Deepak Mohanty, director of mines in the Odisha government, is tracking every single gram of ore mined in the state. A single dashboard installed in his office allows him to check the production, dispatch and movement of minerals in real time across the state. The wonder device is part of Odisha’s Integrated Mines and Mineral Management System (i3MS), which is a GPS and Internet-of-Things-backed software framework.

Mohanty and his team are using i3MS to catch errant miners who have abused the system for years by mining more ore than they were permitted to. This resulted in losses of billions of dollars to the state exchequer and caused huge damage to the environment as well.

Illegal mining used to be a big business in Odisha. Last year, the Supreme Court ordered 131 iron ore and manganese mine owners in the state to pay compensation worth ~175 billion for having illegally mined excess ore to the tune of 215.5 million tonne in complete violation of environment and forest approvals.

“Such incidents are a thing of the past,” claims Mohanty. “Each and every penny from the mining sector is now accounted for and duly deposited into the state exchequer.”

There are various ways in which the leakages and malpractices have been addressed, say the authorities. For example, earlier, the railways had no way of verifying the source of the minerals brought to the railway siding for dispatch. However, with the integration of i3MS with the online systems of the railways, port and commercial tax authorities, every dispatch now takes place only after verifying the details of the e-permits that are issued by the state mining authorities. “This has plugged all the leakages— whether in the form of unauthorised dispatch of minerals or in revenue accruing from mining royalty or other taxes,” Mohanty says.

Developed by CSM Technologies, a Bhubaneswar-based information technology company, i3MS logs the mining process end-to-end— right from the provisioning of clearances to the renewal of contracts to monitoring production, evaluating the quality of minerals being excavated to tracking the mined material en-route to its final destination. Everything is done in real time so that there are no discrepancies in data.

The quality of ore excavated from a particular mine is first tested in a government laboratory. Every truckload of ore dispatched from that mine is recorded in real time at the weighbridge which is connected to the central software system. The quality and weight of the ore are matched with the ore that arrives at the delivery point. All the weighbridges, which are in operation either at the mine head or at the end user’s premises or railway siding or port, are webbased electronic weighbridges integrated with i3MS.

Apart from introducing the system of e-permits, every registered truck is fitted with a GPS device that can transmit its exact coordinates back to the central system. If a truck loaded with ore deviates by more than five km from its intended route, the system sends out automated alert messages. Since the standard transit time for trucks has also been fed into the system, it also notices if a truck stops anywhere for an unusually long time. This ensures that there is no pilferage of ore at any point during transportation.

According to official records, i3MS has substantially raised revenue collection. Implemented in a staggered manner from 201112, the system became fully operational in 2014. Since then Odisha has collected ~305.2 billion in revenue (see table). Moreover, 70,523 trucks have been photographed and registered with the road transport office and the i3MS has been integrated with 389 electronic weighbridges in 147 mines and 328 weighbridges at dealers’ points.

Thanks to digitisation, the turnaround time for key mining functions has also been reduced. For instance, where earlier it used to take 30 days to issue a permit, the process now takes only seven days. Mineral dues clearance certificates are being issued on the same day now— a far cry from the fortnight that it used to take before. Again, new licences are being issued in three days as opposed to three months or more earlier.

Indeed, Odisha’s implementation of the i3MS has been so successful that the Centre is now asking other states to adopt it. Jharkhand and Bihar have already taken steps to implement the software framework. “With the mineral dispatches being tracked from the mines head to the destination in real time, i3MS has checked pilferages to a large extent,” says BK Mohanty, advisor, Society of Geoscientists and Allied Technologists.