Orissa High Court

Cuttack, March 27: Movement of illegally mined ores from the state by rail is set to be in focus.

On March 29, Orissa High Court would hear a PIL which has raised questions on loading and dispatch of ores involving 55,991 rakes within four years from April 2006 to March 2010 through railway sidings. The court has allowed the state government time till then to file a counter affidavit to the PIL, the seventh one to seek a CBI probe into the multicrore mining scam.

Chief minister Naveen Patnaik had drawn Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s attention to role of railways in facilitating transportation of illegally raised ore.

“In recent time, our officers have detected cases of dispatch of large number of rakes carrying illegally raised ore from various railway sidings. There appears to be no system of regulatory framework adopted by the railways. Such laissez-faire approach to management of ore transport by the railways has been unfortunately facilitating raising and movement of ore illegally putting at naught the state’s efforts to bring order into mining activities in the state,” said Naveen.

The PIL has raised the questions on the basis of information obtained from the railway authorities under the RTI. Advocate Asim Amitav Das had filed the PIL on behalf of former MLA Uma Ballav Rath and Talcher-based journalist Purna Chandra Sahoo.

According to the plea, 48,000 rakes of iron ore were dispatched through the South Eastern Railways’s Chakradharpur Division within four years. According to information, each rake contained around 3,500 metric tonne (MT) of iron ore. The prevailing market rate of iron ore is Rs 4,500 per MT and iron ore fines Rs 3,000. If all the rakes contained iron ore fines, Rs 50,400 crores were involved. Minerals, apart from rail, were transported through trucks to the ports.

“Therefore, there is a huge gap between permissible quantity of mining of minerals within four years and the total minerals transported by road and rail,” the petition contended.