Kolkata: To prevent illegal mining/transportation, the state government has directed that no vehicles with six wheels and above carrying riverbed minerals, including sand, will be issued an E-challan from this year unless they are fitted with vehicle location tracking device (VLTD).
Sources said the state has floated a communication whereby it has stated no E-challan shall be issued to vehicles with six wheels and above and not fitted/retrofitted with VLTD devices from January 1, 2025 from the centralised online portal. Such 4G VLTDs are to be fitted from any of the empanelled manufacturers of the Transport department.
It was learnt that Sustainable Sand Mining Guidelines (SSMG) 2016 and Enforcement and Monitoring Guidelines for Sand Mining (EMGSM) 2020, notified by Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India advocates use of IT tools at various stages of mine life cycle for better monitoring and enforcement. The state government has already mandated that all the vehicles that carry riverbed materials (including sand) must carry e-challan to be generated from a centralised online portal for better monitoring and promoting transparency.
Accordingly, all the vehicles that carry riverbed materials, including sand, have already been self-registered with the “vehicle module” of said centralised online portal.
Sources said that apart from ensuring there is no pilferage of sand during its transportation, such GPS based trackers will also thwart the attempts of the sand mafia to divert the vehicles carrying sand to the buyer.