http://thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=421905&catid=38SpecialArticle
Doomed UPA~II ...The Great Thorium Robbery
Since the UPA government assumed office in 2004 with Manmohan Singh as
Prime Minister, 2.1 million tones of monazite, equivalent to 195,300
tonnes of thorium at 9.3 per cent recovery, has disappeared from the
shores of India. Thorium is a clean nuclear fuel of strategic
importance for both nuclear energy generation and nuclear-tipped
missiles. The beaches of Orissa Sand Complex, Manavalakurichi in
Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu
and the Aluva-Chavara belt on the Kerala coast have been identified
under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957,
as the main monazite bearing areas in the country. In most other
countries, thorium reserves are embedded in rocks which require
elaborate processing to extract. Public sector Indian Rare Earths
Limited having divisions at Chatrapur in Orissa, Manavalakurichi in
Tamil Nadu, Chavara and Aluva, and
its own research centre in Kollam in Kerala, is the only institution
authorised to extract thorium from monazite sands. If the Comptroller
and Auditor-General were to audit the accounts of the IREL and the
Department of Atomic Energy, custodians of fissile minerals, the
coalgate scam would look like small change. The missing
thorium,conservatively estimated $100 a tonne, works out to about Rs
48 lakh crore, putting all other UPA scams in the shade.
To a question by Kodikunnel Suresh addressed to the Prime Minister in
the Lok Sabha on 30 November 2011, about the quantum of monazite being
exported to other countries and whether the companies mining beach
sand have violated the norms of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, V
Narayanaswamy, Minister of State in the PMO, said that beach sands
containing heavy minerals barring monazite were being exported.
However, he said that
licence under the Atomic Energy Act was required for the export of
monazite and thorium which were prescribed substances, and that no
licence was given for the export of these items. The Department of
Atomic Energy, directly under Manmohan Singh, delisted heavy minerals
like monazite and ilmenite from the prescribed substances list vide SO
61 (E) dated 20 January, 2006, to facilitate their export by private
companies. Licences have been issued
with the proviso that “having undertaken to comply with the conditions
prescribed in the Atomic Energy (Working of mines, minerals hand
handling of prescribed substances) Rules, 1984, licence is issued with
the approval of the Licensing Authority.”
The Licencing Authority is the Nagpur-based Chief Controller of Mines,
under the Union Ministry of Mines. Ever since CP Ambrose, Chief
Controller of Mines, an upright officer, retired on 30 June 2008, the
post has been deliberately kept open and Ranjan Sahai, Controller of
Mines, Central Zone, alleged to be close to private placer mineral
industrialists, has been allowed to officiate in place of the Chief
Controller. Four years is a long
time to keep a key post of crucial, strategic and vital importance vacant.
Sahai is said to be the most favoured public functionary of the Union
Ministry of Mines working in the field, enjoying dictatorial clout
with all officials in the ministry. Several written public complaints
against Sahai are pending with the Central Vigilance Commissioner, New
Delhi. It is reliably learnt that the Departmental Promotion Committee
has already selected an officer working in Nagpur to fill the post of
Chief Controller of Mines but his appointment is being prevented by
Sahai. Such is his clout in the Ministry of Mines.
According to K Balachandran of the Atomic Minerals Directorate for
Exploration and Research, DAE, commercial exploitation of beach sand
in India dates back to 1909 when Schomberg, a German chemist, was
exploring for monazite occurrences in search of thorium for the gas
mantles industry.
After the German, the French, who understood the value of thorium,
began buying beach sand from Kerala and exporting it to their country.
From this starting point many milestones have been crossed with the
discovery of ilmenite, rutile, garnet, zircon and sillimanite in our
beach sands. When the Department of Atomic Energy was established in
the early days of independence, one of the first decisions Prime
Minister Nehru took was to ban the export of thorium. India is reputed
to have the largest mineral sands resources in the world. These are
also among the least exploited resources having a high potential to
meet the country’s energy needs. Seventy per cent of India energy is
met by import of oil and gas. The beach placer mining sector was
opened to private entrepreneurs in 1998. Export of beach sands
registered a quantum jump after 2005. As if to promote exports, even
radioactive minerals, much needed for our nuclear energy programme,
are allowed to be taken out of the country unchecked. To add insult to
injury, private exporters of prohibited minerals are presented with
Special Awards and Certificates of Merit by the Chemicals and Allied
Products Export Promotion Council of the Government of India.
Indiscriminate mining, if not monitored and regulated, can cause
severe erosion in the coastal areas.
At least now the government should exclude thorium producing placer
minerals like monazite, ilmenite, rutile, zircon, and mineral
complexes together with uranium minerals from the purview of
privatisation under the Mines and Minerals (Development and
Regulation) Act, 1957, and the Indian Atomic Energy Act, 1948. These
resources should be specified in the Central List of Part XI of the
Constitution. The Mines Act should be amended with a mandate for the
setting up of a Mines Regulatory Authority on the lines of the Telecom
Regulatory Authority or the Insurance Regulatory Authority in order to
ensure that any complex minerals which have the potential to produce
thorium is not allowed to be mined and conserved with provisos for
extraction and delivery of processed thorium to the agencies of the
Atomic
Energy Commission. Considering the strategic importance, select
thorium bearing areas should be declared as exclusive zones and
brought under the security cover of the Army, Navy and the Air Force.
The civil administration has proved incapable of handling this
responsibility. All private trade, both internal and external, in
thorium producing placer mineral complexes should be banned and the
entire thorium extracted so far should be brought under the control of
the Joint Nuclear Fuel Control Agency. The CBI should investigate
illegal mining of thorium resources and bring the culprits to book
expeditiously. Since local communities constitute the first line of
defence to ensure protection and conservation of the strategic
reserves; they should be given a substantial share of the mining
profits. To ensure that the distribution of such share reaches the
beneficiaries, the Joint Nuclear Fuel Control Agency should pass on
the amount to the Panchayati Raj institutions in the mining areas.
As Shashi Tharoor, former Minister of State for External Affairs, said
at a recent book release function: “Good governance transcends all
administrative frontiers. It requires politicians to recognise the
importance of working together for a common goal.” The UPA government
has been squandering Bharat Mata’s gift of nature for private greed
and proved in the last eight years that it is incapable of providing
good governance.
COURTESY COL VIRENDAR CHAUHAN
The greatest service Manmohan Singh could do to the nation before
another scam even bigger than the great thorium robbery surfaces is to
resign and go.
Surely we have had enough of his leadership
Doomed UPA~II ...The Great Thorium Robbery
Since the UPA government assumed office in 2004 with Manmohan Singh as
Prime Minister, 2.1 million tones of monazite, equivalent to 195,300
tonnes of thorium at 9.3 per cent recovery, has disappeared from the
shores of India. Thorium is a clean nuclear fuel of strategic
importance for both nuclear energy generation and nuclear-tipped
missiles. The beaches of Orissa Sand Complex, Manavalakurichi in
Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu
and the Aluva-Chavara belt on the Kerala coast have been identified
under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957,
as the main monazite bearing areas in the country. In most other
countries, thorium reserves are embedded in rocks which require
elaborate processing to extract. Public sector Indian Rare Earths
Limited having divisions at Chatrapur in Orissa, Manavalakurichi in
Tamil Nadu, Chavara and Aluva, and
its own research centre in Kollam in Kerala, is the only institution
authorised to extract thorium from monazite sands. If the Comptroller
and Auditor-General were to audit the accounts of the IREL and the
Department of Atomic Energy, custodians of fissile minerals, the
coalgate scam would look like small change. The missing
thorium,conservatively estimated $100 a tonne, works out to about Rs
48 lakh crore, putting all other UPA scams in the shade.
To a question by Kodikunnel Suresh addressed to the Prime Minister in
the Lok Sabha on 30 November 2011, about the quantum of monazite being
exported to other countries and whether the companies mining beach
sand have violated the norms of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, V
Narayanaswamy, Minister of State in the PMO, said that beach sands
containing heavy minerals barring monazite were being exported.
However, he said that
licence under the Atomic Energy Act was required for the export of
monazite and thorium which were prescribed substances, and that no
licence was given for the export of these items. The Department of
Atomic Energy, directly under Manmohan Singh, delisted heavy minerals
like monazite and ilmenite from the prescribed substances list vide SO
61 (E) dated 20 January, 2006, to facilitate their export by private
companies. Licences have been issued
with the proviso that “having undertaken to comply with the conditions
prescribed in the Atomic Energy (Working of mines, minerals hand
handling of prescribed substances) Rules, 1984, licence is issued with
the approval of the Licensing Authority.”
The Licencing Authority is the Nagpur-based Chief Controller of Mines,
under the Union Ministry of Mines. Ever since CP Ambrose, Chief
Controller of Mines, an upright officer, retired on 30 June 2008, the
post has been deliberately kept open and Ranjan Sahai, Controller of
Mines, Central Zone, alleged to be close to private placer mineral
industrialists, has been allowed to officiate in place of the Chief
Controller. Four years is a long
time to keep a key post of crucial, strategic and vital importance vacant.
Sahai is said to be the most favoured public functionary of the Union
Ministry of Mines working in the field, enjoying dictatorial clout
with all officials in the ministry. Several written public complaints
against Sahai are pending with the Central Vigilance Commissioner, New
Delhi. It is reliably learnt that the Departmental Promotion Committee
has already selected an officer working in Nagpur to fill the post of
Chief Controller of Mines but his appointment is being prevented by
Sahai. Such is his clout in the Ministry of Mines.
According to K Balachandran of the Atomic Minerals Directorate for
Exploration and Research, DAE, commercial exploitation of beach sand
in India dates back to 1909 when Schomberg, a German chemist, was
exploring for monazite occurrences in search of thorium for the gas
mantles industry.
After the German, the French, who understood the value of thorium,
began buying beach sand from Kerala and exporting it to their country.
From this starting point many milestones have been crossed with the
discovery of ilmenite, rutile, garnet, zircon and sillimanite in our
beach sands. When the Department of Atomic Energy was established in
the early days of independence, one of the first decisions Prime
Minister Nehru took was to ban the export of thorium. India is reputed
to have the largest mineral sands resources in the world. These are
also among the least exploited resources having a high potential to
meet the country’s energy needs. Seventy per cent of India energy is
met by import of oil and gas. The beach placer mining sector was
opened to private entrepreneurs in 1998. Export of beach sands
registered a quantum jump after 2005. As if to promote exports, even
radioactive minerals, much needed for our nuclear energy programme,
are allowed to be taken out of the country unchecked. To add insult to
injury, private exporters of prohibited minerals are presented with
Special Awards and Certificates of Merit by the Chemicals and Allied
Products Export Promotion Council of the Government of India.
Indiscriminate mining, if not monitored and regulated, can cause
severe erosion in the coastal areas.
At least now the government should exclude thorium producing placer
minerals like monazite, ilmenite, rutile, zircon, and mineral
complexes together with uranium minerals from the purview of
privatisation under the Mines and Minerals (Development and
Regulation) Act, 1957, and the Indian Atomic Energy Act, 1948. These
resources should be specified in the Central List of Part XI of the
Constitution. The Mines Act should be amended with a mandate for the
setting up of a Mines Regulatory Authority on the lines of the Telecom
Regulatory Authority or the Insurance Regulatory Authority in order to
ensure that any complex minerals which have the potential to produce
thorium is not allowed to be mined and conserved with provisos for
extraction and delivery of processed thorium to the agencies of the
Atomic
Energy Commission. Considering the strategic importance, select
thorium bearing areas should be declared as exclusive zones and
brought under the security cover of the Army, Navy and the Air Force.
The civil administration has proved incapable of handling this
responsibility. All private trade, both internal and external, in
thorium producing placer mineral complexes should be banned and the
entire thorium extracted so far should be brought under the control of
the Joint Nuclear Fuel Control Agency. The CBI should investigate
illegal mining of thorium resources and bring the culprits to book
expeditiously. Since local communities constitute the first line of
defence to ensure protection and conservation of the strategic
reserves; they should be given a substantial share of the mining
profits. To ensure that the distribution of such share reaches the
beneficiaries, the Joint Nuclear Fuel Control Agency should pass on
the amount to the Panchayati Raj institutions in the mining areas.
As Shashi Tharoor, former Minister of State for External Affairs, said
at a recent book release function: “Good governance transcends all
administrative frontiers. It requires politicians to recognise the
importance of working together for a common goal.” The UPA government
has been squandering Bharat Mata’s gift of nature for private greed
and proved in the last eight years that it is incapable of providing
good governance.
COURTESY COL VIRENDAR CHAUHAN
The greatest service Manmohan Singh could do to the nation before
another scam even bigger than the great thorium robbery surfaces is to
resign and go.
Surely we have had enough of his leadership
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