The Orissa government will find it tough to provide another mining site to Vedanta Resources, which was denied permission to mine bauxite in Niyamgiri Hills, a top company official said today.
"The state government in its MoU with Vedanta in 2004 had committed to supply 150 million tonnes of bauxite for its alumina refinery at Lanjigarh," a top company executive said.
Though the Vedanta Group was ready to take bauxite from any other alternative mine to run its refinery after being denied permission to mine in the Niyamgiri hills, it would have to wait for long to get the raw material from within the state, he said.
Pointing out that the state's 11 bauxite sites had 54.89 per cent of the country's total bauxite reserve, he said Orissa cannot do much without the help of the Centre.
"We will follow guidelines set according to laws for allocating any mines to any company including Vedanta," Steel and Mines minister Raghunath Mohanty told reporters here.
Though Vedanta has applied for seven bauxite mines in the state, the government cannot allot raw material reserves to it at its will, as "we have to follow rules", he said.
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Vedanta had applied for small reserves located at Karlapat, Sijumali, Tukurmali, Kasumali, Bijimali and Sabarmali hills.
Besides Vedanta, other companies have also applied for PL and, therefore, it would be a tough job for the state government to reject other applications in order to give priority to Vedanta, an official at the steel and mines department said.
Vedanta had eyes on small reserves, which are located within 10 km from its refinery unit at Lanjigarh, but the small mines only have 12.28 million tonnes of bauxite, not enough to meet the requirement of the refinery, he said.
As Vedanta has also been accorded permission by the state government to expand its refinery capacity from 1 mtpa to 6 mtpa, the six reserves (totalling only 12.28 million tonnes) located in close proximity to the refinery unit would be finished within two years.
Orissa has reserves of 1,805.48 million tonnes of bauxite.