Sarda Mines Private Ltd (SMPL) owes the Odisha government about INR 620 cr in differential royalty, for the material it sold JSPL between 2012-14, but only evacuated last year after the SC allowed it to finally resume operations.
In a recent letter the Joint Director of Mines, Joda has send the company a demand notice for “differential royalty” to the tune of INR 316.66 crore for a quantity of 13.5 million tonnes dispatched from the mines in February 2020. There’s an added liability of INR 299.73 crores and another INR 19.9 crore towards the National Mineral Exploration Trust that the company is expected to pay within the next 7 days or before the 15th of April.
As SteelMint had reported on 17 March , the Odisha government has argued that royalty is to be paid at the time of evacuation of the mineral, in this case, based on the prevailing rates of iron ore as on Feb 2020. Sarda Mines had paid a royalty of INR 682.4 crore on 31 March 2014 for ore it had sold to Jindal steel and Power. The amount was arrived at by applying the highest rate applicable in exchange of an exemption from stacking requirements. The Joda office of the Odisha Directorate of Mines, which had been asked to figure out how much royalty would be applicable as on date, says SMPL owes it INR 999.13 crore for the 13.5 mnt it despatched in 2020.
The state is also claiming a compensation of INR 2056.4 crore from Sarda Mines, which it says violated its EC, by evacuating all 13.5 million tonnes within two months of 2020. SMPL isn’t the only one accused of not maintaining a pro-rata level — in January the state slapped similar notices on six others — however, its liabilities given the quantum are steeper than the others.
Leave a Reply