Bhubaneswar, Aug. 21: The Vedanta Alumina Limited (VAL) in Odisha is facing a raw material crisis, which has crippled operations at its refinery at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi.

The chief operating officer of the company, Mukesh Kumar, said production at the Lanjigarh refinery had practically stopped for the last two days as no bauxite was available to feed the plant.

The company, which received a major jolt when the Union ministry of environment and forest (MoEF) rejected the proposal to mine bauxite from the nearby Niyamgiri hills in 2010, had been outsourcing bauxite from Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Gujarat. But these sources have dried up now.

“Mines in Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh have closed. It is not even possible to get bauxite from Chhattisgarh and Gujarat,” said Kumar, adding that the refinery at Lanjigarh was on the verge of closure.

The government, too, does not offer much hope to the company, which has invested around Rs 45,000 crore in Odisha. The government is yet to take a call on Vedanta’s application for alternative mines.

“We have submitted 26 applications, but have not been offered any alternatives as yet,” said Kumar. The crisis first erupted after the MoEF gave permission to mine bauxite from Niyamgiri hills in August 2010.

The Odisha Mining Corporation and Vedanta challenged the decision of the Centre in the Supreme Court. The Centre also threw a spanner in the company’s plans for the expansion of the Lanjigarh project.