Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Friday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking to cancel the tungsten mining rights given to Vedanta group company Hindustan Zinc Limited near a biodiversity heritage site in Madurai district.
He said a grim situation had arisen as the Centre had awarded tungsten mining rights. “We had already raised our concerns on such auctioning of mining rights of critical and strategic minerals, through the letter dated 03.10.2023, from our Honb’le Minister for Water Resources and Natural Resources. But unfortunately, the Hon’ble Union Minister of Parliamentary affairs, Coal and Mines in his letter dated 02.11.2023 had rejected them, mentioning that the auction of critical minerals by Ministry of Mines cannot be withheld, in the larger interests of the country,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Union Ministry of Mines had declared Hindustan Zinc Limited as the preferred bidder of Nayakkarpatti Tungsten block (Critical and Strategic Mineral) under Tranche IV on 07.11.2024. The Tungsten Block comprises of Kavattayampatty, Ettimangalam, A.Vallalapatty, Arittapatty, Kidaripatty and Narasingampatty villages.
“Among them, Arittapatti is a notified Bio-Diversity Heritage site and is famous for archaeological monuments including cave temples, sculptures, Jain symbols, Tamil Brahmi Scripts and Pancha Pandavar stone beds. Any mining activity will cause irreparable damage to these sites,” he said.
In addition, commercial mining in such densely populated villages will definitely affect the people in these villages. This has caused immense anguish to the people, who fear that their livelihood may be lost forever. Hence, the Government of Tamil Nadu would never allow any such mining to be undertaken in these areas, Stalin said.
“Considering the above situation, I urge you to instruct the Ministry of Mines to cancel the award of tungsten mining rights given to Hindustan Zinc Limited in Madurai District. I also request you to instruct the Ministry of Mines to desist from floating any bids for mining without the consent of the concerned State Government,” he said.