BHUBANESWAR : With the Orissa High Court dismissing Vedanta’s plea to revive a 2004 bauxite pricing and supply arrangement with the Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC), former Union minister and Sambalpur MP Dharmendra Pradhan on Friday used the verdict to attack leader of Opposition and BJD president Naveen Patnaik. He accused Naveen of repeatedly misleading the people of Odisha on the MMDR Amendment Act, 2026.
In a post on X, Pradhan said the people of Odisha were not naive enough to accept a repeated lie as truth. “The Orissa High Court order has made it clear that the previous BJD government had paved the way to extend undue favour to private companies by bending rules,” he said.
Pradhan said the high court had rejected the claim of 150 million tonnes of bauxite supply made by a specific private industrial house, which had been promised by the BJD government in 2004. The court has made it clear that old promises regarding nxatural resources could not override the law, he said.
Pradhan said that following the Narendra Modi government’s amendments to the MMDR Act and Rule 45 of the Minerals (Other than Atomic and Hydro Carbons Energy Minerals) Concession Rules, 2016 (MCR, 2016), a conversion factor was applied to the average sale price of bauxite.
As a result, the price of bauxite increased from Rs 750 per tonne to Rs 1,707 per tonne. It would have benefited the OMC and generated thousands of crores of additional revenue for the state through royalty, DMF and NMET, he said.
Pradhan alleged that Naveen, who was the then chief minister, had written separate letters to the Centre on February 1 and October 7, 2020, requesting to reduce the conversion factor and apply the minimum price sought by the private company be applied. “This clearly proves that the letters were written to favour a specific private company by sacrificing the state’s interest, which was rejected by the Centre,” he alleged.
The former Union minister questioned Naveen’s intention behind requesting the Centre to reconsider the implementation of a rule. “In whose interest and to please whom did you take such a step? Is not the pending dues of about Rs 5,400 crore from a specific private company for long the result of your wrong decision?
What is the real secret behind causing loss of lakhs of crores of revenue to the state and giving undue favour to a private company by sacrificing the interests of the people of Odisha?” he stated in the post.