UDAIPUR | Jan 04, 2017: With a major shuffle in the vigilance wing at the Mines and Geology Directorate and officials getting stricter with offenders, the department has earned a record revenue of Rs 64.90 lakh in just three months. The wing seized 124 vehicles illegally transporting minerals, including quartz, soap-stone, dolomite, pyrophyllite, marble, sand, bricks and other minor minerals.

"In the past nine months, the department had registered seven cases of illegal mining, 106 of illegal transport and four reports on access stock. We earned Rs 94.87 lakh during the period," Madhusudan Paliwal, superintendent engineer said. In October, major transfers had taken place within the department. The new team acted on a planned strategy and managed to earn twice the size of revenue collected by the earlier team.

The Mines directorate had earned a bad reputation after the mega bribery scam exposed in September 2015.The Anti-Corruption Bureau had arrested IAS officer Ashok Singhvi, the then principal secretary (Mines), for allegedly masterminding and running a corruption racket. Singhvi, a middleman, mining baron SherKhan and two other officials of the mining department, were arrested for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 2.55 crore.

(Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/)