India: Technical committee to study possible amalgamation of mineral areas in Odisha

-By SteelMint Bureau/Meera Mohanty

Odisha will study the feasibility of combining small leases into larger blocks before it auctions them. With a notification dated 5 May 2022, the state’s Department of Steel and Mines has constituted a technical committee for this purpose.

“After exploration, it is found that there are many smaller mineral blocks in terms of size and quantity of mineral resources in the state which are not fulfilling all terms and conditions for putting these blocks to auction,” says the notification.

The committee will be chaired by the state’s Director Geology and include as members the Deputy Director General, GSI Bhubaneswar, the state’s Director of Mines, and representatives of state-owned OMC and Central government PSU, Steel Authority of India amongst others.

Combining two or more leases would allow for the boundary areas to be exploited as the space-constrained Tata Steel and Jindal Stainless propose to do at their adjoining chrome mines, but under an MoU. The promise of larger scale of operations and greater efficiency however, rights to these will require a higher net worth and performance guarantee narrowing the pool of contenders in an auction.

The steel and mines department presumably dealt with this concern when it auctioned the Nuagaon area as one whole against the advice of some of its own officials who had suggested splitting the 767.284 ha into three separate leases.