Arcelor-Mittal to set up greenfield plant at Torpa

The much-awaited site selection by Arcelor-Mittal for its 12 millon ton integrated greenfield steel project in Jharkhand has ended.

The company's London-based executive vice-president Sudhir Maheshwari sent a letter recently to the Jharkhand chief secretary, P P Sharma, which he stated that the steel major had selected Torpa as the site of its proposed steel project because it would lead to eviction of the minimum number of people from the site, while it had excellent availability of water and land for infrastructure development.

Maheshwari requested the chief secretary to extend the state government's support and permission to start the ground work for setting up the steel project.

The steel major needs nearly 10,000 acres for its steel project and township.

Arcelor-Mittal also requested the Jharkhand government to approach the Railway Ministry for doubling the 100-km stretch of the Pokra-Pakla railway line on the Ranchi-Rourkela section to enable the steel company to transport raw materials.

The company stressed the need of early allocation of iron ore mines for the project.

Arcelor-Mittal's annual requirement of iron ore is of the order of 600 million ton for a span of 30 years once the plant achieves optimum production capacity.

Arcelor-Mittal had applied for four iron ore mines including Karampada and Ghatkuri in Jharkhand.

It was also keenly interested in the Chiria mines which were spread over 2,375 hectares in West Singhbhum district.

The Chiria iron ore deposits in the West Singhbhum district had estimated reserves of nearly 2 billion ton of high quality iron ore. Chiria was identified and developed by the privately-owned and Kolkata-based Indian Iron & Steel Company (IISCO) nearly a century ago. IISCO was later nationalized, after which it became a sick company and subsidiary of SAIL.

IISCO was finally shut down by the Union steel ministry and referred to BIFR.

A revival plan for IISCO was drawn up and thereafter it was merged with SAIL.

After constitution of Jharkhand in 2000, a dispute had erupted over the renewal of the lease of Chiria and Gua mines.

The former NDA ruled state government led by Arjun Munda had taken the decision not to renew the four of the ten leases enjoyed by IISCO in favour of SAIL.

Meanwhile, the IISCO mines passed into SAIL ownership.

SAIL went to the national tribunal and won the case, establishing its right over the iron ore mines.

The Jharkhand government challenged the orders of the national tribunal before the Jharkhand High Court where the case pending for order.

The Centre has already allocated Arcelor-Mittal 83.33 million ton of steam coal in Sereghara block in Jharkhand on a sharing basis. The allocation of iron ore mines was yet to be decided and recommended for Centre's approval.