Coal news and updates

Coal India goes tech-savvy in land acquisition

As Coal India Ltd prepares to take up hundred of projects needing acquisition of thousands of acres of land, it has decided to go for an innovative and out-of-the-box web and software-based land acquisition management system, thus becoming the first public sector company to do so.

The IT system is being used for the past three years only by large private sector players like Tata Steel, Vedanta and Essar among others.

"Land Acquisition Management System is an out-of-the-box software, so designed that it will provide complete information about land management, stages of land acquisition, and also updates the data on the fly," an official of the IT firm that developed the system for Tata Steel.

LAMS, being Geographic Information System (GIS) based, is being used for the past 3-4 years only, exclusively by the private sector players like Tata Steel, Vedanta Essar among others, he said.

The tool would fundamentally change the way public sector companies acquire land.

"It would help in assessment, payments for private land with owner details, tracking of land allotments and possessions identification and timely resolution of land acquisition related issues," a Coal India official said.

The state-run miner would need around 275 projects to raise its output by another 400 million tonne from the present level of about 500 million tonne by 2020 while another 100 million tonne would come from projects which are still on the drawing board.

"The cloud-based GIS application would facilitate information dissemination on plots, villages, land owners, acquisition status, valuation, compensation and also mine plan on the mobile if need be," said the official of the IT firm.

source: http://www.dnaindia.com