MANGALURU | Apr 20, 2015: KIOCL chairman and MD Malay Chatterjee said the area in Kudremukh National Park, where iron ore mining was being carried out, has been restored with greenery.
He said mining activities at KIOCL worksite at Kudremukh, 110 km from Mangalore, had come to a halt in 2005 with the Supreme Court confirming the status of Kudremukh National Park area.
The mine was taken over by the government. The Central Empowered Committee had said that mine safety measures and procedures adopted were in order.
The regeneration of environment has already taken place. Chatterjee said the the company will request the government to return the money deposited after the Supreme Court order in this connection."Mother nature has taken care of stabilization over a period of eight years. Initially, we planted eight lakh saplings and subsequently added seven lakh. More than 16 lakh saplings have been planted, which has stabilized the mining area," Chatterjee said, on the sidelines of a national conference held at National Institute of Technology Karnataka on Friday.
"All these things have been taken care of with inputs from the state forest department and Mangalore University. Saplings were planted with the guidelines of experts in agriculture and environment. We have deposited Rs 19 crore, which has now increased to more than Rs 40 crore with interest. We have requested the government to return it so that it can be better utilized for other purposes," he said.
"We are pitching aggressively with the state chief minister for the allotment of mines. The Union minister of steel and mines was in our corporate office and reviewed the status after the closure of Kudremukh mining area. He said that he will set up an exclusive meeting with the chief minister demanding that mines be allotted to KIOCL at the earliest," Chatterjee said.
"We have signed an MoU with Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corporation Ltd (APMDC) and the same has been sent to the government for approval. We are going ahead in exploring Ananthpur district, where we anticipate that a reserve of more than 40 million tonnes of magnetite having 30% iron ore content is available. Once the reports are available, we will be in a position to set up a 1.2 million tons pellet plants based on the techno-feasible report. Mining will be jointly done with the APMDC," he added.
(Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/)