'Foreigners plundering mineral wealth'

By Our Staff Reporter

MAINPUR (Raipur), APRIL 17. The people of this little town are a disgruntled lot. And for good reason. The enormous mineral wealth of the area is being ``plundered by a handful of foreigners'' and the Government is sleeping over the issue.

The issue being that of illegal mining of kimberlite or the soil containing diamonds. The indifference of the State Government and the dual policy adopted on disinvestment has angered the residents. The increasing number of smuggling cases being detected is an alarming indication of the extent of the problem. Not only are diamonds being taken away, soil containing garnets and precious stones such as Alexandra is also stealthily finding its way out to merchants in Bhubaneshwar and Mumbai, besides truck-loads being taken away to Australia and South Africa under the garb of research by the B. Vijay Kumar Chhatisgarh Exploration Pvt. Limited (BVCE).

Discontent has spread after the arrest of financier Mr. Bharat Shah, for his alleged links with the underworld don, Dawood Ibrahim. Mr. Shah is one of the directors of the company which exported diamonds until granted ``prospecting licence for diamond exploration'' in Madhya Pradesh, of which Chhatisgarh was a part until November last year.

`CM too busy'

``The Chief Minister has no time to visit Mainpur to sort out this issue because he is too busy with the Bharat Aluminium Corporation Ltd (BALCO) controversy, says Mr. Ramsajeevan Sahu, a resident of Mainpur. ``The Chief Minister has visited the BALCO plant many times but not a member of his Cabinet has ever bothered about us,'' he adds. ``We are not demanding anything for ourselves. Illegal mining is a national issue and the foreigners who are doing it need to be checked,'' says Mr. R.P.Singh. He alleges that the BVCE staff was spread over 36 villages and was carrying out clandestine mining. ``Truck-loads of soil, containing precious gems are being taken away without a check.''

The residents say that while the sale of tribal land near the BALCO plant is a major issue, the sale of land belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and the free movement of foreigners here are also serious. Land has been bought under benami transaction or in the name of locals who were subsequently driven away.

While the Government claims a Mining Officer has been posted at Mainpur to ensure that exploration is done legally, a visit to the place showed that only a ``mining guard'' had been deployed, who, too, was not around.

Denying these charges, a BVCE official said so far only 7,500 kg of soil had been taken out as against the permissible 10,000 kg, and that too after completing the due formalities.

Villagers guilty too

Illegal mining is being carried out by the villagers too. The residents reportedly go out in the night to look for precious gems which are subsequently sold to middlemen or directly to the buyers. There have been cases where sacks full of soil are also sold across the border in Orissa, confirmed during the interrogation of four persons arrested for illegal mining from the Gariyaband area last week. Earlier, Arif Mohd and Vijay Gond were arrested from Mainpur for the same charge. According to sources, over 60 persons have been arrested for illegal mining in the past eight years.

Mr. Brijmohan Aggarwal, a Bharatiya Janata Party MLA, says diamonds worth Rs. 500 crores have already been smuggled out of the country. Digging was being carried out beyond the permissible depth and foreigners were moving around freely in the area, he added.

The entire region between Gariyaband and Deobhog is full of mineral wealth, and the BVCE had been given ``prospecting licence'' to carry out explorations including aerial survey, geophysical survey and analysis, over 4,600 sq.km.

The Opposition has been demanding the scrapping of the deal after the arrest of Mr. Shah was followed by a team of Mumbai police and CBI visiting the BVCE office in Raipur. Mr. B. Vijay Kumar, an NRI, is the brother of Mr. Bharat Shah and has a tie-up with Australia's Oropa Ltd and South Africa's MSA.

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