By Sujeet Kumar, IANS
Raipur : Maoist guerrillas are planning to step up attacks on iron ore mining facilities in the Bailadila hills in Chhattisgarh, according to police sources.
The hills are known for one of the largest and finest quality iron ore stocks in the world and account for 18 percent of India’s estimated 24 billion tones of iron ore deposits.
Police sources said they have found leaflets and posters in which the radicals have vowed to intensify attacks on iron ore facilities in the Bailadila hills in Dantewada district.
The red-coloured Hindi leaflets recovered from hilly terrains close to Bailadila hills say: “Chhattisgarh’s forests have vast stocks of natural resources but big companies have found access to the rare natural stocks while the poor forest dwellers are becoming poorer every day.”
The Bailadila hills iron ore is divided into 14 deposits. The National Mineral Development Corp Ltd (NMDC), India’s largest public sector iron ore producer and exporter, has mining activities in three deposits. It also has a deal with the Chhattisgarh government for opening up deposit number 13 in a joint venture.
Two private steel majors, Tata Steel and Essar Steel, recently got prospecting licences to feed their upcoming mega plants.
Tata Steel has a written deal with the state government to set up a five million tonnes per annum (mtpa) steel plant with Rs.100 billion investment in Bastar. It has bagged a prospecting licence for deposit number one that has an estimated stock of 150 million tonnes.
Essar Steel, which is committed to set up a 3.2-mtpa plant in Dantewada with an investment of Rs.70 billion, has obtained a prospecting licence for deposit number three, which has stocks of about 100 million tonnes.
The leaflets were found just two days after NMDC chairman-cum-managing director B. Ramesh Kumar admitted at a press conference in Hyderabad that the company suffered losses of Rs.1.15 billion in 2006-07 and Rs.900 million so far in this fiscal due to Maoist attacks on mining facilities in Bailadila hills.
NMDC’s annual iron ore production is more than 25 million tonnes, accounting for about 15 percent of India’s iron ore production.
The majority of the country’s outputs come from Bailadila deposits. It exports about nine percent of its output to Asian nations, mainly China and Japan.
The Maoists had blasted power towers in Dantewada district May 31, halting iron ore production at Bailadila for over a week.
The Maoists also killed eight Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel in February 2006 in an attack at NMDC’s explosives store at Bailadila hills. The guerrillas had taken away huge stocks of high-powered explosives that are yet to be recovered.