Just after a week following the naxal attack on a bauxite mines of the National Aluminium Company (Nalco) in Orissa’s, the Centre has called a review meeting on Monday for analysing and taking preventive steps against possibilities of such attacks in future on other mines across the country.
Sources told FE that official from the ministry of mines and Nalco chairman and managing director CR Pradhan will be meeting the home ministry officials for preparing a blue print for protecting these mines from such naxals attacks. The meeting on Monday is a follow up meeting after similar meeting was held on April 14 in New Delhi.
The Monday meeting is significant as many of the naxalites affected areas in states like Orissa, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and others are mineral rich areas and many government and state-owned companies have operations in these areas.
On April 12, the naxalites had attacked the bauxite mines of the state-owned Nalco Panchapatmali mines, which resulted in death of 10 members of Central Industrial Security Forces (CISF) and four naxalites. The target was to loot the explosives stored in the Nalco’s warehouses, which is usually used for mining operations. Mines produce around 15,000 tonne of bauxite, which is then processed in the Nalco’s alumina refinery in Damanjodi. This is not the first time that naxalites have attacked any mine.
Back in Feb 2006, Maoist insurgents stormed the National Mineral Development Corporation’s explosives storage facility at Hiroli in Chhattisgarh, in which nine CISF jawans were killed and huge pile of explosives were looted.