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The Supreme Court has kept a ban on bauxite mining in hills in Odisha considered sacred by residents and has asked the state high court to investigate if digging would disrupt the environment or people living there, a judge said on Thursday.
The mining project was planned to supply up to 150 million tonnes of bauxite to Vedanta Aluminium, India's largest producer of the metal, for a 1-million-tonne a year plant in the state that was shut in December because of lack of the raw material.
India, the world's fifth-biggest producer of bauxite, has been limiting its issue of bauxite leases, mainly because of protests over land acquisition.
Bauxite mining in the state, although initially approved by the environment ministry, was scrapped over accusations of the violation of envinromental norms in August 2010.
