To reduce the heat of the Shah Commission, eight mine owners of Odisha joined hands to contribute Rs100 crore for local area development of two minerals-rich districts, Keonjhar and Sundergarh. The mine owners made the commitment before the Justice MB Shah Commission. A trust, Gramin Vikas Chaitnya Kendra (GVCK), was formed to supervise the developmental work.
The mine owners said that the Rs100-crore corpus is only for the first couple of years, and after that all the participants had pledged to plough 4 per cent to 5 per cent of their profit after tax (PAT) in the GVCK.
This group was formed with mine owners who made a pledge to invest the money. The miners include RP Sao, DR Patnaik, Indrani Patnaik, Kalinga Mining Corp, Sirajuddin & Co and their common contractor Thriveni Earthmovers.
Since Justice Shah appreciated the gesture and the State Government agreed to it, there was no problem to implement it. The GVCK was registered for the purpose. The mine owners indicted by the commission proudly exclaimed, “We are going one step ahead of CSR (corporate social responsibility); we are going for sustainable
development.”
The miners denied that creation of the trust is meant to douse the fire of illegal mining being probed by the commission. They claimed that the endeavour was separate from the probe. “The GVCK is not an attempt to dilute the probe,” they said. Through the GVCK, the mine owners planned to build education centres, super-specialty hospitals and a sports academy. Road and bridge construction, providing drinking water to villages and restoring the original flora and fauna of the areas are also on the agenda.
Nevertheless, one long year has already passed; strangely, there is no news about the corpus fund. Nothing about construction of education centres, super-specialty hospitals, sports academy, roads and bridges, etc. Now, naturally the question arises: What was the purpose of the corpus fundIJ Where has the fund gone missingIJ Observing the overflow of money in the elections, there are strong reasons to believe that the purpose of the corpus fund could have been diverted from aam admis’ welfare to shortly transformed khas admis’ prodigal spending in the elections.
It is virtually not possible on part of an individual to contest for an Assembly seat as an Independent candidate and at the same time finance other Independent candidates from several other seats in Keonjhar district, in addition to fielding an Independent for the lok Sabha. While it may be possible for an individual to finance such a large amount for himself only, there appears no tangible logic of such an huge spending on a group of people to contest from different constituencies of the district. So, the fingers are raised about the source of funding and the purpose of it and, in the process, the uncertain fate of the corpus fund.
Therefore, the people of the district should take note of a great machination orchestrated by the perpetrators of the great mining scam in order to capture the seats at any cost for a bargain with the next government. In case the questionable scheme becomes a reality, the destiny of Keonjhar’s mining and industry could be confined to a few and the deserving people of the district shall be deprived of their legitimate right. So, let’s pledge to vote only clean and sincere candidates irrespective of party affiliations for a prosperous Keonjhar.
(The writer is Editor, The Industry and Mines Observer, Bhubaneswar)