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The Times of India about an hour ago

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Vedanata seeks bauxite from within Orissa

9 Sep, 2010, 10.10PM IST,PTI

BHUBANESWAR: Within weeks of being denied permission to mine bauxite from Niyamgiri hills, Vedanta Reources on Thursday sought the mineral from Orissa itself to feed its aluminium refinery at Lanjigarh saying importing the raw material from other states is expensive.

"We are running the refinery at Lanjigarh for over a year by importing bauxite from Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. ....transporting bauxite from other state is certainly a costly affair. Therefore, we need the raw material from the state preferably from Kalahandi or Raygada districts," Vedanta Aluminium Lanjigarh COO Mukesh Kumar said.

The company also has plans to get a major chunk of its requirement from Gujarat, he told newsmen here.

The Centre last month rejected permission to Vedanta for its mining project at Niyamgiri in Kalahandi district citing violation of certain green norms. The Ministry of Environment and Forest had also issued a show cause notice as to why its refinery at Lanjigarh should not be closed down.

Vedanta had said that as per its MoU signed with the Orissa government for the refinery the state has to supply bauxite for running its Lanjigarh refinery.

The actual requirement of the 1 mtpa capacity refinery unit at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district is at least three million tonnes of bauxite every year, which is much more than the yield of the seven small bauxite reserves of 12.28 million tonnes in Raygada and Kalahandi districts applied for by the company, Kumar said after meeting state Steel and Mines Minister Raghunath Mohanty yesterday.

Kumar said he had told the minister that the company would like to procure the raw material for its refinery at Lanjigarh through Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC).

Mohanty had said at the meeting that OMC had prospecting license for 2,365 hectares in the bauxite-rich Gandhamardan hills, located in Balangir-Bargarh districts it was not given mining licence pending forest clearance, Kumar said.

When contacted, Mohanty confirmed that the Gandhamardan prospecting license had come up during the meeting and added that the union ministry of environment and forest (MoEF) was yet to decide on the mining license at the ecologically sensitive hills, which is also a storehouse of medicinal herbs.

Mohanty had during the meeting yesterday told the UK-based group to have patience to get alternative sources of bauxite for its Lanjigarh refinery as allocating mines to any company requires a lot of time and the government has to go through different phases.