Mining of bauxite in this border district by private parties has been disallowed for the last 44 years via a notification dated December 31, 1963, issued by the then state health and industries department. The mineral deposit here had been reserved for a Public Sector Unit (PSU) alumina plant with Hungarian collaboration first conceived in the 1960s. But according to the petitioners, the government has now given the mining rights for an upcoming 8.8- lakh-ton capacity alumina plant near Gundiali village in Mandvi taluka to the controversial Ashapura group, a private sector enterprise.

“You cannot reserve the entire deposit of this mineral only for one private company. This is against natural justice and we want to challenge the government on this ground,” said Rajesh Bhatt, president of the Kutch Chamber of Commerce and Industries.

This apart, the GMDC has also been accused of mining and selling the mineral at a high price to private parties in contravention of the government’s own 44-year-old policy and rules for its sole use for the public sector.

“The sale prices of private mine owners in Jamnagar are much lower at around Rs.300 per ton against that of GMDC (Rs.560),” Bhatt said, adding that GMDC had been regularly mining over one lakh tonnes of the mineral per annum for its defunct calcinations plant at Gadhasisa and this mineral included even plant grade (high grade with alumina content being more than 54 per cent) and selling it to the private parties.

Bauxite is found in large quantities in Jamnagar, Porbandar, Junagadh and Sabarkantha districts, but it is only in the border district where no private party is allowed to exploit it.

“While exploitation of bauxite by the private parties has been permitted in other districts of the state, the mineral deposit here has been reserved for the public sector, mainly for setting up of an alumina plant, an illusion the people of Kutch have been chasing since the PSU was first conceived with collaboration from Hungary four decades ago,” said Bhatt.

He said mining of bauxite, the raw material for producing alumina, has not been kept reserved in any other state where it is mined, namely Bihar, Maharashtra, Orissa and West Bengal. States like Orissa have a huge deposit of this mineral and that is why the country’s biggest alumina plants are functional in that state. If the state government is keen on private participation in this sector, then it must liberalise the mining rights, he said.

He further said even bauxite miners of Jamnagar, where exploitation by private enterprise is not banned, have approached their forum fearing non-renewal of their expired licenses.

“We have now decided to fight the case institutionally rather than individually and are in the process of contacting the Jamnagar Chamber of Commerce and Industries for the same,” he said. Jamnagar had more deposits of bauxite (45 million tonnes) than Kutch (35 million tonnes).