The Supreme Court on Thursday quashed Vedanta Ltd’s plea seeking export of iron ore in Karnataka. Ruling that “there is no need to allow the export of iron ore for now,” the apex court heard the plea filed by the Karnataka Iron and Steel Manufacturers’ Association.
The plea sought court’s intervention to stop state owned National Mineral Development Corp. from charging different prices of iron ore in the state than what it charges in the rest of the nation. Earlier in July 11, the apex court had banned mining of iron ore in Karnataka following allegations of irregularities, resulting in enormous environmental damage.
While the apex Court allowed resumption of mining in April 2013, it enforced an annual cap of 30 million tonnes besides banning the exports.
Vedanta said that there was an oversupply of iron ore in Karnataka and apart from 30-mt production, there was an additional supply of six million tonnes from mines with extended lease period and stocks.
In its 2013 order, the apex Court had directed that iron ore be sold only through e-auction conducted by the court-appointed monitoring committee. The situation was such that in the first quarter of 2016-17, more than 34 percent of iron ore (3.42 mt) put up for auction remained unsold.
In the past few months, Vedanta has been unable to auction its iron ore though the base sale price fixed by the company was around the average price realised by the monitoring committee during an earlier stock sale. The apex court also rejected the prayer of Vedanta Group for referring the matter to the High Court for adjudication.
The bench also refused to direct the monitoring committee to fix base price for iron ore.
