The Uttar Pradesh government has issued a notice to the mining officer of Sonbhadra for issuing official statement about the discovery of around 3,000 tonnes of gold in the district even as the report was junked by the Geological Survey of India (GSI).
Mining officer KK Rai had earlier claimed that the GSI and UP Mining department had discovered around 3,000 tonnes of gold at Sone Pahadi and Hardi village area in Sonbhadra.
“Some newspapers had carried the statement of Rai. The government has issued a notice asking him about the source of his information about the discovery of gold and why he spoke to the media without taking permission from his seniors,” a government official told The Pioneer on Sunday.
He said the mining official had been given a week’s time to submit his answer. “Government believes that wrong information has sent a bad message and raised expectations that India may become ‘sone ki chidiya’ once again,” he said.
Excavation of gold has always been a big news in Uttar Pradesh. In 2016, a hermit, Shobhan Sarkar, had claimed that gold could be found in Dondiya Kheda village in Unnao district. Excavation was carried with the help of ASI but it proved to be an exercise in futility.
Earlier, the mining officer of Sonbhadra had disclosed that the gold was estimated to be around 3,000 tonnes at Sone Pahadi and Hardi village area. But the GSI clarified that it had not estimated such vast resource of gold deposit in Sonbhadra district. The northern region of GSI has carried out several exploration works for gold but the results have not been encouraging.
“The exploration was carried out in 1998-99 and 1999-2000 and in the report, it had estimated a probable category resource of 52806.25 tonnes of ore with 3.03 grams per tonne for a strike length of 170 metres in Sone Pahadi area of Sonbhadra district,” GSI director and PRO Ashish Kumar Nath said in a press statement.
It was clarified that the total gold which could be extracted from the total resource of 52806.25 tonnes of ore was approximately 160 kg and not 3,350 tonnes, as mentioned in media reports.
The work for finding gold reserves in Sonbhadra started in the year 1992-93 after the Central Geological Survey of India took over. Reportedly, it was the British who first initiated the process to find gold reserve in Sonbhadra region.
