Bihar Government: Bihar govt withholds salaries of mineral development officers for failing to meet collection target | Patna News
Patna: The state government has withheld the salaries of around a dozen district mineral development officers (MDOs) for failing to meet the target of revenue collection and checking the rampant illegal sand mining by the mafias causing huge revenue loss to the state exchequer.
Director of Mines, Md Nayyer Iqbal said the department had withheld the salaries of around 12 MDOs for their poor performance, adding they were served show-cause notices prior to this action.
“The officials have been punished for two reasons. While they failed to achieve the target of revenue collection, they had also failed to check illegal sand mining in the state,” the director told TOI on Sunday.
The decision to withhold the salaries was taken during the district-wise review of revenue collection by the department last month. During the meeting, the performance of several MDOs posted in Jehanabad, Gaya, Munger, Jamui and Aurangabad districts were found far from satisfactory as the department managed to achieve just 42% of the total target.
Reports said the department was able to collect only Rs1,500 crore from the mining sector till December last year against the target collection of Rs3,590.66 crores.
Official sources said, of late, there has been an alarming increase in illegal sand mining while at several places, the sand mafias and their henchmen even attacked the officials during crackdown on them.
A few of them were even killed in the attacks.
Reports also said illegal sand mining goes on along various rivers, such as Sone, Ganga, Kiul, Falgu, Chanan, Morhar and Punpun as this has emerged as a lucrative business. Hundreds of boats, trucks, tractors, dumpers and JCBs can be seen extracting and loading sand along the banks of various rivers.
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