Rs 800 cr iron ore plant at snail’s pace

14 Aug 2017

The proposed Rs 800 crore 10 million tonnes per annum iron ore beneficiation and pellet plant at Pur village in Bhilwara district is moving at a snail’s pace. The Gehlot, the government in the year 2012, had decided as a policy to grant the mining licence of low-grade iron ore in Bhilwara to the Union government’s public sector unit.

 After this decision, the Union ministry of mines and steel asked the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RNIL) to set up the plant and secure the mining licence. But, even after five years, the RNIL has not been able to submit its mining plan to the state government. The RINL has appointed consultants for all work relating to the mining of iron ore in 2013. The consultants were required to submit their report in 42 months. But the RNIL has not been able to submit its mining plan after which the environmental clearance would be required.

The state mining department has sent several reminders, but the RNIL was slow in responding to it. Yet, the state government did not allot the earmarked mining area to other private steel manufacturing company.

The estimated iron ore reserve at the Bhilwara mine is pegged at 320 mt and the Rajasthan government was keen to allot one mine to the RINL. Till 2012, the RINL, which was in the midst of expanding its capacity from 3 to 6.2 mt per annum, depended mainly on another state-owned entity NMDC for its raw material requirement. It was very happy when the state government expressed its desire to allot the iron ore mines on the condition that apart from mining, the pellet plant would also be set up at Pur village. This would have provided employment to about 2,500 persons.

The Rajasthan Government has consolidated RINL’s two area-specific applications and decided to allow mining lease rights for 1,043 hectares, out of 5,252.3 hectares applied for. But after this offer made by the state government, RINL reported a seven per cent drop in revenues for the April-September 2012-13 period at Rs 5,789 crore over the corresponding last year’s Rs.6,216.40 crore on sluggish sales and lower steel prices.

Thus, the RINL adopted a go slow stance at new projects and it has not been able to give the project the expected push till now.

On the other hand, the Jindal Saw Ltd, a Sajjan Jindal group company, planned to set up a 1.2 MT per annum pellet plant integrated with beneficiation plant situated at mine pit head near Pur village. The Jindal Saw Ltd was granted mining concession of one block, after experiencing the slow progress made by the RINL

Source: DNA