Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Mar 21:
The Odisha government has decided to provide certain laterite stone mines to Vedanta Aluminium Limited (VAL) to source raw material to its refinery plant at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district.
“The state government has decided to provide certain laterite stone mines to Vedanta which requires bauxite for its refinery at Lanjigarh,” Steel and Mines Minister Prafulla Kumar Mallick said in the Assembly on Friday while replying to a question of Congress MLA Chandrasekhar Majhi.
The minister said, VAL can extract bauxite from the laterite stone mines and use it in its refinery plant in Lanjigarh.
Kotpad area in Koraput district is rich in lime stone, china clay and other mineral deposits. There have been no applications for mining-related industry or activity in this area, the minister stated.
Post the BALCO agitation, the number of application received for the Gandhamardan mine will stand cancelled, Mallick added.
In the current fiscal, the state government aims to earn revenue from mining sources of Rs 6200 crore. While Rs 4504 crore has been collected so far, it expects to attain at least Rs 5200 crore as mining revenue at par with last year’s collections. The mining activities have been suspended in the state in wake of the Supreme Court order owing to dip in mining revenues, Mallick said.
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