RAIPUR: Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh government, in a major action against the central public sector enterprise National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC), denied the transit permit (TP) leading to halting of iron ore transportation in Dantewada, south Bastar, about 450 km from Raipur.
The move taken by the state forest department led the loaded rail rakes and hundreds of trucks coming to a standstill at Kirandul and Bacheli the entire day as the transit permit passes for iron ores were turned down on the ground that the mining giant NMDC should first settle the “pending royalty amount Rs 144 crore to Chhattisgarh”.
Around 7-8 rail rakes besides hundreds of lorries transport iron ores daily from the two iron-ore complexes operated by the Navratna mining enterprise in Dantewada. “The NMDC’s pending royalty of around Rs 144 crore remain due to Chhattisgarh. The mining organisation has been dilly-dallying the issue for long. The forest department has declined to issue transit passes to freight trains and trucks carrying iron ore from Dantewada. It’s the revenue owed to the state government”, said Mohammed Shahid, chief conservator of forest (Jagdalpur).
The NMDC officials were left surprised with the action taken now by the government. With the halt of transportation for a day, the nation’s largest producer of iron ore is likely to face daily business losses worth several crores besides the heavy demurrage charges (penalty) that the organisation will have to pay to the railways for detaining its rakes beyond the free time. The work at the iron ore loading units of NMDC complexes were stopped by the state forest officials.
“We were taken aback over the state government’s decision to deny transit permits now, as we have instead been regularly paying since 2012 and securing TP without any inconvenience. Our officials are negotiating to sort-out the issue and hopefully will find a solution in the next 2-3 days”, a senior NMDC officer said.
The NMDC sources informed that the Chhattisgarh is getting the amount (royalty) consistently since 2012 onwards from the mining company headquartered in Hyderabad but now the state government insisting to pay the pending royalty amount reportedly claimed from 2002 to 2011, was protested by the mining enterprise citing it as “not feasible”. The matter was also earlier heard in the courts but yet to get resolved.
Political analysts wondered that the turn of events at Dantewada taking place at a time when the Congress government is very disappointed following the Centre not inclined to take a concrete decision over the former’s demand to return Rs 17,240 crore (deposited with National Securities Depository Limited) of the state employees under the New Pension Scheme and the refusal by the ministry of coal to give Rs 4,024 crore royalty to the government.