New Delhi, August 14 : Unable to break the jinx over Chiria mines and peeved at the cavalier attitude of the Jharkhand Government on resolving the impasse over it, Union Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan today demanded nationalisation of the world-famous mines saying he will seek Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intervention to issue an ordinance to this effect.
“The delay on the Chiria mines is totally frustrating. Repeated requests by the Centre to the Jharkhand government have not produced any results. So I am planning to write to the Prime Minister to nationalise Chiria through an ordinance,” Paswan told The Indian Express. He said state-run steel giant Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), the key claimant of the mines, had tried to arrive at an out-of-court settlement with the state, but the latter has not reciprocated so far. SAIL has several leases on the Chiria mines, which have reserves of an estimated three billion tonne of rich-quality iron ore. Its leasehold is distributed among six blocks. However, the state government has disputed SAIL’s claim to two of the six block — Ajitaburu and Sukri — spread over a combined leasehold area of 933 hectares. These blocks were with the erstwhile IISCO. After its merger with SAIL, the latter staked its claim to the two blocks.
But ArcelorMittal, which has pledged to invest Rs 40,000 crore to build a 10-million tonne plant in the state, needs 600 million tonne for its project.
But SAIL is executing major expansion and modernisation programmes, entailing an investment of Rs 54,000 crore. It would need an estimated 5,736 million tonne of ore over the next 50 years, of which 2,710 million tonne are required for brownfield and greenfield plants in Jharkhand itself. The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has already asked the Jharkhand government to renew the mining leases of Chiria to SAIL and allow it to mine 2 billion tonne of the 3-billion-tonne reserves. The PMO has directed the state to immediately allow SAIL access to 1 billion tonne for present use and for another 1 billion tonne, SAIL should strike a separate deal with the state to feed the expansion of its Bokaro Steel Plant and a new plant in the state, but the state has been rather lukewarm in its response to the said proposal.
