Kolkata: The Land and Land Reforms Department of West Bengal is starting a portal for all the legal and regularised brick kilns across the state.
All the legally registered brick kilns across the state need to mandatorily register themselves on this portal. They also need to pay the royalty tax to the government department from this portal only.
At this moment, there are more than 5000 registered brick kilns in the state. Till now, the state had instructed these legal brick kilns to register themselves in the Banglar Bhumi portal.
However, more than half of the brick kilns neither registered themselves in Banglar Bhumi nor paid royalties in the pretext of slow connectivity of this portal.
As such, the state earned royalty revenues of Rs 39 crore from brick kilns in 2023-24, and this fiscal it has earned Rs 35 crore till date.
However, with the new portal, the Land & Land Reforms Department expects to earn royalty revenues of nearly Rs 150 crore.
As such, this is part of the target of Rs 1160 crore revenues set up for the Land & Land Reforms Department. District-wise, Purba Bardhaman has a target of Rs 213,14 crore, Birbhum Rs 267.90 crore and Paschim Bardhaman Rs 131.24 crore.
These are the districts where maximum brick kilns, sand mining and stone mining happen. With most of the royalty revenues not being collected, there is the maximum possibility of royalties through the new portal from these districts.
A bigger problem is the existence of another 10,000 brick kilns, which are unregistered and operating illegally. The West Bengal Pollution Control Board has not sanctioned a single brick kiln in the last 20 years.
While the portal will smoothen the services of the registered kilns, efforts are being made to see what can be done with the illegal kilns.
