The clamping of prohibitory orders by the Orissa government under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code at Banspani railway siding in Keonjhar district has taken its toll on the Railways, dealing a blow to the loading of minerals like iron ore.
It may be noted that the state government had imposed the prohibitory orders at Banspani railway siding on March 5 to facilitate verification of records of mineral transportation by the Railways.
The prohibitory orders have been clamped in the wake of allegations of illegal mining and transportation of such illegally mined ore from the state.
Besides Banspani, the prohibitory orders have also been imposed at Jaruli and Joda (east) sidings which come under the jurisdiction of the South-Eastern Railway (SER). The zonal railway is incurring an average freight loss of 30,000-40,000 tonnes per day because of the blanket restriction in loading from these three sidings.
“Together, we load 16 rakes per day at the Banspani, Jaruli and Joda (east) sidings but the imposition of the prohibitory orders has hit our freight traffic. Even though we are trying to offset the loss by transporting the ores from other sidings, we are still loading 8-10 rakes lower than what we normally load”, a spokesperson of SER told Business Standard.
All these three sidings are under the Chakradharpur division of SER and the zonal railway loads an average of around 60 rakes every day in all the sidings of the division.
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He pointed out that four rakes are still waiting at the Banspani siding due to the prohibitory orders and these rakes are yet to be diverted to other sidings.
“We are in constant touch with the district police and district administration of Keonjhar and several rounds of meetings have been held to resolve the issue. Even the general manager of SER held a round of dialogue with the Chief Secretary of the Orissa government but till now, no solution has emerged”, the spokesperson added.
Stating that checking the legitimacy of the mining activities is the responsibility of the state government, he said, it is not our concern to check if the iron ore brought to the siding is illegally mined or if the truck carrying the mineral has a permit or not.
SER is in favour of an early solution to the issue as the prohibitory orders on the sidings have also hit the iron ore supplies to steel units including Tata Steel, he said.