Jubilee Post News & Views
RASHMI SHARMA
- The bubble of hitting gold jackpot in UP has busted.
A day after the Uttar Pradesh government said to have found huge gold deposits amounting to around 3350 tonnes in the rocky terrains of Sonbhadra district, the Geological Survey of India (GSI) on Saturday belied the tall claims. The GSI has said that only 160 kilogram of gold can be extracted from the said area.
The GSI which carried out exploration works along with the mining department of UP government, regarding gold and other minerals in Sonbhadra district said that merely 160 gram gold can be extracted from here. The GSI officials also said that the quality of gold that can be extracted from this place would be average. It said not to have estimated such kind of vast resources of gold deposits found in Sonbhadra.
The GSI, northern region had carried out several exploration works for gold in Sonbhadra and it said that the results were not encouraging to come up with major resources for gold. According to the GSI director, Ashish Kumar Nath, the explorations were first carried out in 1998-99 and then in 1999-2000 and report was submitted to UP govt for further necessary action.
GSI has estimated a probable category resource of 52806.25 tonnes of ore with 3.03 grams per tonne average grade gold for a strike length of 170 meter in Sonpahari area of Sonbhadra district. He informed that on the basis of this report the total gold which can be extracted from the total resource would approximately be 160 kg and not 3350 tonnes.
It may be mentioned that on Thursday the mining department of UP govt had said to have found huge gold deposits amounting to 3350 tonnes. It said that this would be 5 times of the total gold available in the country. The deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya on Saturday said that the gold recovery in Sonbhadra will remove poverty of region as well as the entire state.
The mining department had even announced to start the auction of gold deposit site for exploration very soon. It stated that process for the auction has been initiated. The state government mining department on Saturday went one step ahead and claimed to have found platinum in Lalitpur district.
However after the statement from GSI, the office of mining department in UP issued clarification saying that only 3.03 gram gold per tonne of ore has been found. It said that report from the GSI has been sent to higher officials for further action.
