12 E&MJ; • JANUARY 2016 www.e-mj.com
REGIONAL NEWS - ASIA
Indian Bauxite Projects Scuttled
Ultra-left wing extremists have stalled
India's plan to kick-start greenfield bauxite
mining projects, the first of their kind to be
developed since the early 1980s.
Armed insurgency, violence and abduc-
tions attributed to the extremists have forced
the government of the southern Indian
province of Andhra Pradesh to back away from
bauxite mining projects on 1,212 hectares of
forest land containing estimated reserves of
about 617 million metric tons (mt).
According to an official in the Andhra
Pradesh state government, a government order
permitting exploitation of the bauxite reserves
by Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development
Corp. (APMDC)—the mining arm of the gov-
ernment—and by other private aluminum
companies has been kept in abeyance be-
cause of threats from the extremists.
He said that over the past several
decades, extremist activities across the for-
est belt had been suppressed by increased
policing and counter-offensives by military
and paramilitary forces. But the extremists,
over the past few months, were successful
in tapping into resentment and opposition
by indigenous residents to mining in forest
land, expanding their influence and taking
territorial control over large tracts of land
believed to be rich in bauxite reserves, the
official added.
In October, the return of extremism
was marked by abduction of three leaders
of the ruling political party of the pro-
vince. Though the extremists released
the three after 10 days, the message
relayed through the captives was that the
provincial government should scrap all
bauxite mining projects and that leaders
of the ruling party should actively partici-
pate in the antimining campaign, the offi-
cial said.
The bauxite projects that triggered
extremist activities include a joint venture
between National Aluminium Co. Ltd.
(Nalco) and Andhra Pradesh Mineral
Development Corp. (APMDC). The joint
venture has been granted access to 250
million tons of bauxite reserves in the
province and Nalco proposed to invest $1
billion in setting up mining and refinery
project and another $1.5 billion on a
smelter in the second phase.
Anrak Aluminium, a joint venture of Penna
Industries and Ras Al Khaimah Investments,
UAE, proposed to develop a bauxite project
with capacity of 1.5 million mt/y.
And Vedanta, which had built an alu-
mina refinery at Lanjigarh in Odisha but
had to stop operations there after failing to
secure a raw material source, had been
hoping to source bauxite from the neigh-
boring mining project in Andhra Pradesh.
NEWS-CALENDAR OF EVENTS
JANUARY 28–29, 2016: Energy and Mines London Summit, London,
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JANUARY 31–FEBRUARY 3, 2016: 41
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