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Phalguna Jandhyala

Hyderabad, July 21 National Mineral Development Corporation’s (NMDC) plan to set up a Global Exploration Centre has received poor response from the six State Governments that the company approached.

NMDC had in February 2008 written to the State Governments of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Orissa, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh proposing to set up the centre with an initial capital of Rs 100 crore, with its headquarters at Raipur. None of the State Governments had even acknowledged the letters written and there was a strong resistance from them towards setting up of the centre, according to company sources.

According to a Steel Ministry official, the State Governments were apprehensive about the exploration centre as they felt that their discretion will be effectively curbed if such a centre actually started operations.

According to the letter written by the Chairman and Managing Director of NMDC, Mr Rana Som, to the State governments, “The centre, will inter-alia, cater to the needs of various State Governments in identifying, exploring and establishing the presence of mineral reserves, especially iron ore, which may not have been explored till now or have been inadequately explored.”

According to the letter, NMDC would get geologists to join in the exploration and give free service to any State Government, which allowed exploration to be done on its land.

The letter also states that in India, the work related to investigation and exploration was very poor, a fact acknowledged by the high-power Hooda Committee set up for amendment of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Deregulation) Act, 1957 and formulation of the New Mineral Policy. According to Government data, India’s exploration was only 4 per cent of what Australia was doing. Of this, 3 per cent was in coal, and balance was for ferrous and non-ferrous segments.

The committee observed that while Australia spends on an average around $500 million per annum on survey and exploration, Latin America spends around $700 million. On the other hand, India, which has a geological setting identical to both these regions, spends on an average only $5 million, mainly through Geological Survey of India, and a major part of this is spent on coal.

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