JSPL may move to court if Ramchandi block is deallocated

NEW DELHI: Jindal Steel and Power ( JSPL) is likely to take legal recourse if government deallocates Ramchandi coal block on which hinges the company's ambitious Rs 80,000-crore coal-to-liquid project, a senior company official said.

"We would (contest the decision in court)... We will certainly contest if any such a decision is communicated to us," JSPL's Managing Director and CEO Ravi Uppal told reporters on the sidelines of India Economic Conclave here.

The Coal Ministry recently decided to deallocate 11 blocks given to companies including JSPL's Ramchandi block in Odisha for allegedly sitting idle on mines.

"You know the Ramchandi or any other blocks we have worked a lot on them and if at all we have not been able to go to the extent they wanted is because we were not allowed to come in. In some places, we have not been given security and Ramchandi, the state government is still to sign MoU with us," Uppal said.

"Without the MoU, how can we proceed? So, if the central government has given in-principle approval, state government has to sign the MoU with us for us to go and proceed there," he added.

JSPL recently said the application for prospecting licence was pending with Odisha government for more than three years and the state government has not yet "executed PL on one pretext or the other in spite of a number of reminders".

"In such circumstances, we could not start exploration activities for no fault of the company," he said, while noting that the company has already completed various initial work, including detailed feasibility study for the project and has invested Rs 74 crore on it.

The Ramchandi block, which has estimated 1.5 billion tonnes of coal reserves, was allocated for ambitious Coal-to-Liquid project in February, 2009 and JSPL had already announced investment Rs 80,000 crore on the venture.