The small port of Belekeri in the south of Karwar in the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka has emerged as a nerve centre of illicit iron exports, according to the Karnataka Lokayukta report. This port can only operate in some seasons and yet, in April and May alone last year, 15.84 lakh MT of iron ore was exported through this port, out of which 11.59 lakh MT was illicit, reveals the report, a copy of which was reviewed by FE.
The volume is in striking distance to the 20.7 lakh tonnes of iron ore shipped from Paradip port in the same period, India’s third largest major port for iron ore, according to shipping ministry statistics.
Interestingly, the Belekeri port ranks as a minor port with inadequate infrastructure and improper security. Minor ports are administered by states and so remained outside the surveillance of the Tariff Authority for Major Ports, the regulator for ports. It was quite amazing, therefore, that iron ore exports of this quantum were allowed to be carried out through this fair weather port. The Lokayukta has directed the closure of the port, in view of its ill-equipped nature, till such time it is brought to the standards maintained by other leading ports of the country. Karnataka has 10 minor ports.
?The happenings at Belekeri port have special significance for this report,? justice Santosh Hegde states, and in closer examination of the report, it is not difficult to see why.
Surprisingly, despite the huge consignments exported for several years after global ore prices started rising, the Coast Guard or other reconnaissance wings of the shipping ministry never cottoned on to the scale of its operations.
The majority of illegal transport of iron ore took place during 2009-10, which shows that the illicit activity only continued to gain in momentum despite national attention. Such illegal transaction was code named ?risk amount?.
About 36.50 lakh MT of illegal exports happened during the period, almost double that of 2007-08, according to justice Hegde?s findings.
Most of the time, the iron ore illegally extracted and transported have come from Hospet, Sandur, Bellary and Koppal.
The most shocking aspect is that after the forest department seized illegal iron ore in Belekeri port in March, 2010, it was found that large quantity of the iron ore seized was stolen and illegally exported. The stolen quantity is estimated at 6.10 lakh MT. The iron ore stored at Belekeri port now comes up to about 2.73 lakh MT. Between 2006-07 and 2010, a stunning 77.38 lakh metric tonne (MT) of illegal iron ore was exported through the port.
Justice Hegde’s report says that all four lease holders/port services providers at Belekeri, namely Shree Mallikarjun Shipping, Adani Enterprises, Salgaonkar Mining and Raj Mahal Silks have been found to be actively involved in large scale illegal imports. Since then, Adani Enterprises has denied any involvement in this regard.
The service providers offered facilities like jetties, barges, road and other basic amenities including cargo loading. They were scheduled to maintain data of quantity received truck-wise, name of supplier, origin of ore etc. Ships berthed in deep sea at the Belekeri port were loaded with cargo, by way of barges. However, the port was not equipped with coast guards for monitoring the movement of vessels and other activities, as in ports like Mangalore. There was no watch tower and other infrastructure to keep control of illegal activities in the port.
