Odisha prepares to auction six more mines by October

Odisha government today asked officials of the Steel and Mines department to step up preparations for auction of six more mines by end of October.
The decision in this regard was taken at the State Facilitation Committee meeting held under his chairmanship of chief secretary A P Padhi. The meeting also reviewed progress made in the mining leases auctioned recently.
"Target was set to step up the preparations for auction of six more mines by end of October of the current year," Padhi told reporters adding that six mines comprised four iron ore reserves and one each mine of graphite and lime stone.

While reviewing the progress made on the already auctioned mining projects, Padhi directed the concerned departments to expedite the process for issue of various clearances and approvals for starting the mining operations.
Required tasks against each project were identified and chief secretary set time lines for completion of the tasks by the departments like Revenue & Disaster Management, Forest & Environment, Steel & Mines and State pollution control board.
District Collectors and Divisional Forest Officers were also asked to facilitate the process expeditiously.

The progress of five mining lease projects were reviewed in the meeting.
These included Ghoraburhani-Sagasahi iron ore block of Sundargarh district, Kottametta limestone block in Malkangiri district, Laserda-Pacheri manganese ore block in Keonjhar district, Kalamanga west iron block in Keonjhar & Sundargarh district and Netrabandha iron block of Sundargarh district.

The issues relating to forest clearances, environment clearances, DGPS survey, approval of mining plan, wild life management plan, land acquisition, organisation of Gram Sabha, land mutation, railway siding approval, working permission and others were discussed and resolved in the meeting.