A thousand mini Bellarys have sprung up in the red soil of south Jharkhand, as the state government has slept over the mining lease applications of companies like Tata Steel, SAIL and NMDC in the decade since the state was formed.
Between the year 2000, when Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar and now, it has cleared only 14 lease applications from 1,123 applications to mine iron ore and coal, as per the audited report on the government. Nothing moved in the government except transfers and appointments.
Governor MOH Farook is spot on when he tells FE: ?All transfers and appointments in Jharkhand government had a (price) tag. In the process, the entire administrative system was derailed and everything is in a shambles.?
But chief secretary AK Singh claims big companies have not approached him for grant of mining leases. He also has no idea of the money the state has lost from the illegal mining going on in districts like West Singbhum. ?I am totally ignorant about the type or companies that are operating this racket?. Yet he says he has plans to clean it up.
?The buck stops with me. My whole wisdom and innovativeness is at stake here,? he said.
Meanwhile, Sanjay Pattnaik, chief of raw material strategy group at Tata Steel says his company is still waiting for the state government to work out its mining lease policy for its proposed 12-million tonne plant at Seraikela-Kharsawan district. ?Obviously, public sector and established private sector miners have excellent track records. It?s the small ones who are taking advantage of the market and have started producing. Some who have not even taken up mines are trading.?
The names the chief secretary has missed out on are, however, easily visible on a trip to the Noamundi-BaraJamda-Kiriburu-Barbil belt of the Chiria range which houses some of India?s top quality iron ore reserves. Thakurani iron ore mines, Core Minerals and Shivans Steel, the last belonging to Binod Sinha, co-accused with former chief minister Madhu Koda and still absconding as well as ore crushing plants like those of GH Minerals, litter the hills, gone red through illegal mining.
The apology of a road that connects Jamshedpur about 105 km away sinks into a slush pool at the base of the hills, made worse by the incessant traffic of dumpers and trucks to the crushing units with names like Jai Mata Di.
It is a ?ceasefire zone? now as iron ore prices have cooled globally, says a state government mining official posted in the area. There are just three of them there, including the district mining officer to track the mining area of this district that stretches over 5,351 km. It has also helped that the state is now President’s rule and has begun to apply some preliminary shocks. Incidentally, the post of mining officer for West Singbhum was vacant throughout last year. It has been filled up only now. State mining secretary NN Sinha says he has less than 40 executive staff to police the state with the richest natural resources in India. Sinha says he plans to recruit over 30 mine inspectors on a contract basis. Governor Farook, however, is wary about the measure: ? Taking mining inspectors on contract ? we will go deeper into it,? he said.
The comparison with Bellary in Karnataka creeps in all discussions with the stake holders. Says Singh: ?It is difficult to say if the scale of (illegal mining) operation is the same as Bellary; but the process of encroaching on government mines is the same.?
Pattnaik has an obvious remedy for the phenomenon: ?If the laws were strictly implemented, this would have not happened.? He does not specify ?this? but across Noamandi, one can see crushers dotting the hillsides. They are an eyesore particularly when seen against the thick forest vegetation they have come up in. The trade created a boom town in the Chaibasa, where mobile connections soared and new colonies sprang up on iron ore trade.
The crushed iron ore lumps (grade 580) was the favourite for the domestic sponge iron units, while the fines (both blue dust and red varieties) were exported mostly to China. The cargo moved both by trucks and railways to Haldia, Vizag and Paradip ports.
Since licenced mines in this belt often yielded low-grade ore, the crusher plants bought illegally mined high-grade ore at Rs 500-Rs 600 a tonne, crushed them into standard size and then legalised the entire quantity by ?buying? mining chalans (Form D) from owners of but licensed otherwise useless mines. ?In just an hour?s operation, crushers change the illegally mined ore into legal commodity and clear up the precincts so well that one wouldn?t even know that the crusher was in operation,? an official explained.
The transport, mainly using dumpers, takes place mostly at night, inside the forest area, not very far from where the crushing units running on DG sets are located. A strong network of informers on bikes constantly monitor and inform the illegal mining teams in the forest about the rare movement of police and other patrolling agencies in the area.