Joda mines office suspends 121 trading licences

The Deputy Director of Mines (DDM) for Joda circle has suspended 121 mineral trading licences for not submitting transaction reports.

The local mines director had recently ordered 357 traders in the region to submit details of trading transactions out of which 121 did not respond. The DDM is currently scrutinizing the submitted returns and said strict action will be taken on those who have given false information.

“We took action on 121 traders for not complying with the order to submit returns related to transactions. Several other licences might also get suspended very soon,” said U C Jena, Joda DDM.

The strict action from the Joda office is in sync with the state government policy to discourage intermediaries in mineral trade, sources said.

The state government, in December, decided not to issue any trading licences for mineral transshipment and also barred trader-to-trader mineral sale through a notification. It said the stockyards used for transshipment have been main source of illegal mineral trading.

“Intermediate stockyards which operate between the source of mineral and the point of end use (ports or steel plants) have the potential to facilitate illegal mining activities on the account of their location in such geographically distributed manner making it difficult to put an effective monitoring mechanism in place,” said the order issued from state steel and mines department.

Earlier, most traders used to buy mineral such as iron ore from Keonjhar and Sundergarh mines and stored them at Munduli near Cuttack as a transshipment stockyard. From Munduli, traders had to sell to either export brokers or steel plants elsewhere in the state. But after the December order, only miners will be able to sell iron ore and other minerals to export brokers.