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Our Bureau

Kolkata, June 10

The Indian Railways is mulling if some of the integrated steel plants could be exempted from submitting all the documents, as stipulated in a Railway Board’s recent circular, to be eligible for rail freight under 170 classification for transportation of iron ore.

Unless these documents are submitted, the circular makes it clear, the steel plants will not be treated as genuine consumers of iron ore.

They will, therefore, be charged railway freight for iron ore under 200X classification which is more than 250 per cent higher.

The steel plants have appealed to the Railways for such exemptions as they find it extremely difficult to arrange for all the documents stipulated in the circular.

One such document is the Industrial Entrepreneur Memorandum (IEM).

How can various steel plants under SAIL, or Jamshedpur plant of Tata Steel or Visakhapatnam steel plant of RINL hope to produce IEM which was enforced only from 1991, wonder these plants. Some of the integrated steel plants, particularly those in the public sector, may not have even a valid factory licence because such licences were not required when the plants were set up.

The Jamshedpur plant was set up 100 years ago, the SAIL plant nearly half a century ago and the Vizag plant more than a quarter century ago.

Did the Government’s own plants in those days really needed to have the kind of factory licences being insisted on today?

Problems are being encountered also with regard to the availability of the consent of operation from the pollution control board (PCB). Once the original consent has been obtained, every year, it is placed before the PCB for renewal.

However, the PCBs take their own time to grant renewals.

Some of the integrated steel plants have drawn the attention of the railway authorities to this but not with much success.

Inquires reveal that the Railways is believed to have already extended the deadline for the submission of the stipulated documents for some of the plants – from May 22 to May 31 and further to June 15.

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