SC allows partial mining in Karnataka

23 Apr 2012 Evaluate

The Supreme Court’s (SC) decision to allow partial mining in Karnataka has provided some relief to the local iron and steel industry. However, steel company owners are still cautious as the final judgment is still pending. Karnataka produces about 16 MT steel in a year, amounting to more than 20% of the country's total output.

The companies in the state require about 104,000 tonne of iron ore daily to run their units. Last year, the apex court, through its various orders had put a blanket ban on mining in Karnataka on environmental grounds. However, SC later provided some relief to the industry, by allowing sale of 25 MT of iron ore, lying at various mines in the state, through e-auctions. In addition, it also directed state-owned NMDC to sale 1 MT of the raw material per month to the industries in the state, through its two mines - Donimalai and Kumaraswamy.

As a result, iron and steel companies were facing severe shortages of iron ore, which led to a stark reduction in their production. Also the iron ore being supplied was of inferior quality. Hence, companies were not willing to risk their investments on plant and machinery and were keeping their production low.

JSW Steel, the largest producer of the metal alloy in Karnataka with 10 MT capacity, was running its blast furnaces at 60-65% capacity due to poor quality of ore. According to the last available data, company's production in February had gone down by over 24% compared to January levels.

On April 20, the apex court accepted the recommendations of court-appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC) that suggested allowing mining in Category-A mines - that have more than 50 hectares area - with certain conditions, including Reclamation and Rehabilitation (R&R) plan in place. The final judgment on the issue is yet to be delivered.

The conditions include every individual mine owner giving an undertaking to strictly comply with the provisions of the R&R plan, keeping within the permissible annual production set by CEC and not extending mining into unbroken forest areas. According to an industry official, 5 million tonne of iron ore can get produced, when mining restarts in Karnataka.

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