Abstract

Geospatial Technology for Solvi ng Land Acquisition Problems in Coal Mining Areas
Land Acquisition is a very complex and sensitive issue in the areas where land is required to be acquired for coal mining and associated infrastructural projects. In Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL) land acquisition is underway at Basundhara mine Supreme Court of India appointed a Claims commission to identify legitimate land owners and settle their claims because of the high the number of claimants and disputes .Since it was very difficult to identify such illegal structures MCL sought services of CMPDI to conduct a study and provide a decision support system. CMPDI used Worldview2 high resolution satellite data of two cut off dates as advised by the Claims Commission. Cadastral map was superimposed and a GIS data base was created. All illegal structures which were built after the cut-off date were identified and mapped. Thereafter DGPS survey was done to verify these structures on the ground. A report was generated showing the identification numbers of the illegal structures and their coordinates. All illegal structures were identified and a decision support system was evolved by which objective decisions were taken for elimination of illegal claimants and assessment of genuine claim of the legal claimants using Geospatial Technology. Considerable savings have also been made by MCL amounting to about Rs 30 Crores