Civil society members demand inquiry into mining, land scams

Bhubaneswar: Civil society groups on Friday staged a dharna at Lower PMG here demanding inquiry into various scams in the state and submitted a memorandum to the Governor seeking his intervention in the matter.
“We have have been spearheading campaign to fight corruption and enforce transparency in the administration. During our campaign, various scams and corruption unearthed through RTI have been brought to the state government’s notice. We had also demanded an inquiry into them. But the government has neither taken any step to order an inquiry nor punished those involved in these scams. As a result, the state has suffered loss of thousand of crores of rupees,” a civil society member said.
Justice Shah Commission, inquiring into multi-crore mining scam, had recommended for a CBI inquiry into mining scam in Odisha in 2013 highlighting a number of irregularities, illegalities in resection of leasing out of mining area to companies, over exploitation of mining ore violating lease agreement and all statutory laws like environment (protection) Act, 1986 forest (conservation) Act, 1980, Water (Prevention & Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, Air (Prevention and
Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, Environment Impact Assessment 1994 and failure of state machinery to monitor it. But the government has been ignoring the recommendations. So, we seek immediate intervention of the governor to direct the officials concerned to conduct an inquiry into the land, dal and other scams either by Lokayukta or CBI, he added.