Orissa to give Vedanta bauxite alternative sources

Jan 22, 2010
With the environment ministry holding up the final clearance for Vedanta's bauxite mining project from Niyamgiri mountain in Kalahandi district, the Orissa government today assured company chairman Anil Agarwal that it would provide bauxite ore from its other mines till the company received central clearance.
Agarwal, who met chief minister Naveen Patnaik and his officials this evening at the State Secretariat was assured that the company would get the requisite bauxite ore of 3 MT per annum for its 1 MT per annum alumina refinery at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi till it secured the ministry's approval to mine the biodiverse-rich Niyamgiri hills. "Orissa has the 4th largest bauxite deposit in the world. So supplying bauxite should not be a problem for Orissa," the chief minister reportedly assured Agarwal during the meeting. The industries department has been asked to look into the problem immediately. During his meeting, Agarwal said that he was incurring huge losses by sourcing bauxite for his Lanjigarh refinery. Niyamgiri mountain, the foothills on which the alumina refinery is situated has 75 million tonnes of bauxite deposit, enough to run the Vedanta project for another 25 years.