Arunachal Pradesh has become one of the first States to make geo-tagged photos mandatory in monitoring reports of third party monitors while executing special plan assistance (SPA) and other infrastructure development projects.
“This move will help in checking duplication in the implementation of projects to a large extent,” the Planning Secretary, Mr Ankur Garg, told reporters here on Thursday.
He said this would basically mean that the latitude and longitude of the project site, where each project photograph is taken along with the time and date, would be stamped on it automatically.
The project location would also be indicated on satellite maps in the monitoring reports.
Hand-held digital cameras with in-built GPS (global positioning system) technology are being used for this purpose, he said adding that the North East Development Finance Corporation, the third party monitors for several districts of the State, have already submitted reports with geo-tagged photos of projects in their monitoring reports for SPA 2009-10.
For each project site, two photographs will be taken – one before execution and one after execution of works.
“As the latitude and longitude data would be taken automatically from the satellite, the details of location cannot be fudged and one can have pictorial evidence of a project being implemented at a place,” Mr Garg said.
Earlier, it was possible that photos of different sites were shown before and after project implementation.
But use of GPS technology would do away with this problem.
The Planning Department had received reports that some of the third party monitors were not actually visiting the spot before submitting reports. The time stamping of photos will help tackle this problem, Mr Garg said.