Orissa for withdrawal of Tisco’s right to trade in chrome ore

Dilip Bisoi

Bhubaneswar, June 6: THE Orissa government has decided Tata Iron & Steel Company’s (Tisco) right to trade in chrome ore should be withdrawn and recommended it to the Union ministry of mines on Wednesday.

“We have decided to stop trading of chrome ore by Tisco and have accordingly recommended to the Union mines ministry,” Orissa’s steel & mines minister, Mr AU Singhdeo, told The Financial Express. The issue had been at the centre of a controversy for the past four years. Following a Supreme Court decision, the chrome ore mines in Orissa’s Sukinda Valley were redistributed on lease to a number of steel companies for captive use only. Tisco got 406 hectares. The others who got mining areas were IMFA/ICCL, Jindal, Facor and Ispat Alloys. All of them were denied trading rights.

But for some unknown reason, Mr JB Patnaik’s Congress government withdrew the condition that prohibited trading in the chrome ore extracted from Sukinda mines from the lease agreement with Tisco by an official circular in 1997. None of the other lessee companies was accorded the same privilege. It was expected that the Naveen Patnaik government would withdraw the controversial circular soon after coming to power. But that did not happen. Wednesday’s decision to send a recommendation to the Union government to withdraw Tisco’s trading rights has raised hackles in political and bureaucratic circles here.

“It is a ridiculous decision,” said a senior official in the state government. If the government really wanted to stop Tisco from trading in chrome ore, it could have simply withdrawn the controversial circular by issuing a fresh circular.