Janardhana Reddy. (PTI)

Bhubaneswar, Sept. 8: The arrest of mining baron-turned-politician Janardhana Reddy in Karnataka has set the cat among the miners operating in Orissa while making government officials jittery with investigation into the state’s biggest mining scam still under progress.

Orissa steel and mines department sources said touts making rounds of mines directorate in the hope of getting restrictions lifted on closed mines are now being shooed away by officials scared of attracting punishment. Officials dealing with the issue in the top echelons of the government appear to be equally edgy and would not like to put forward a foot wrong.

Operation in nearly 150 mines were stopped across the state last year in the wake of a scandal that ran into several hundred crores. A majority of these mines were doing business without valid sanctions, including forest and environment clearance.

Many had sought to take advantage of the deemed extension to the Mineral Concession Rules, 1960, which says that in the event of a lease renewal application not being disposed of by the government before the date of expiry of the lease, the period of lease shall be deemed to have been extended till an order is passed thereon.

Sources said a number of mine operators took advantage of this rule in collusion with government officials and continued with their mining activities without valid documents. However, once the scandal broke and the opposition turned the heat on the government, senior officials of the Orissa steel and mines department sought to make it clear that even in the case of deemed extension, mining activity could not be undertaken without required clearances such as environment clearance.

Much of the damage, however, had been done by that time with minerals worth crores of rupees already extracted illegally from mines across Orissa, the scale of the loot being phenomenal in the iron ore and manganese-rich districts of Keonjhar and Sundergarh. Both the districts share border with Jharkhand where an organised mining mafia has been operating for past several years. The henchmen of Jharkhand miners had also been making forays into Keonjhar with impunity.