Attending a meet the press programme, however,the Minister insisted that it is also important to ensure raw material supplies to companies based on ilmenite processing as well as value addition is taking place.

 

“The government is duty bound to ensure raw material supplies to all operating industries. Mining activities are remaining in the public sector itself. The whole issue which has crept now is owing to the lapses on the part of the Indian Rare Earths Ltd in undertaking proper mining and ensuring adequate supplies from the blocks allotted to it,” Kunhalikutty said.“The state-owned KMML is not facing a big crisis since mining is going on in the Panmana block,” he said. The Minister said it was clear that smuggling of ilmenite sand was rampant and should be kept under check.

 

“The people in the area and the authorities concerned should cooperate to prevent it. The ilmenite reserves in the coast are not lying there but smuggled out regularly,” the Minister observed.

 

“The court has intervened in a writ petition filed by the CMRL, a private company, which has demanded mining rights to meet its raw material demands. The file related to this is with the Law Department now and it has not come to me so far,” he said, when his attention was sought on a general public perception that the government and all political parties were ultimately bowling in favour of the private sector companies.

 

To a query on whether the government was aware of the fact that ilmenite sand was being supplied by the IRE at prices substantially lower to a private company,compared to the raw material delivered to the KMML,the Minister feigned ignorance.

 

He also said that he was unaware of the massive land purchase undertaken on behalf of the private companies including one based at Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu,in the Alappuzha district’s Arattupuzha coastal stretch,rich in ilmenite sand deposits. When pointed out that value addition on ilmenite sand under the public sector in the state was keeping only a tardy pace, while private companies were striking gold,Kunhalikutty said that progress was there on various envisaged projects and it would be completed at the earliest.