Bailadila Betrayal: How the BJP Govt helped Adani and denied iron ore to Bayyaram in Telangana

Telangana State Mineral Development Corporation chairman Manne Krishank did a little bit of digging into recent history and has found a few connected incidents, which explain why the Centre pushed Telangana’s request for the Bayyaram Steel Plant onto the backburner.

Hyderabad: More skeletons are tumbling out of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre’s closet over why it has actually been dilly dallying with Telangana’s demand for a steel plant at Bayyaram, and why the union government has repeatedly tried to scuttle the steel plant that was promised in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act.

Telangana State Mineral Development Corporation chairman Manne Krishank did a little bit of digging into recent history and has found a few connected incidents, which explain why the Centre pushed Telangana’s request for the Bayyaram Steel Plant onto the backburner.

---

➡️Telangana wrote to Union for Iron Ore from Bailadilla to Bayyaram to keep AP Reorganisation Act promise.
➡️Modi decides on April 25 2018 to supply Iron Ore from Bailadila to Korean Co. Posco
➡️20 Sept 2018 Adani takes over Bailadila
➡️Posco Adani sign 37500cr Steel Mill deal👇🏾 pic.twitter.com/8cCMpI8v18

— Krishank (@Krishank_BRS) February 18, 2023

According to Krishank, Telangana had written several times to the Centre in 2015, asking for permission to get iron ore from the mining projects in Bailadila region of Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh, so that the Bayyaram plant could be set up as part of the Reorganisation Act. However, the Centre chose to keep quiet, even as there were repeated statements from different quarters at the Centre that the Bayyaram plant would not be feasible because iron ore deposits were ‘not sufficient’ in Bayyaram and whatever was available was ‘low grade’ ore.

Just as it ignored Telangana’s request to get the ore from Bailadila, the Centre also kept mum over the State’s suggestions for a railway line or a slurry pipeline from Bailadila to Bayyaram.

Even as Telangana waited, the Modi Cabinet decided on April 25, 2018 to supply iron ore from Bailadila to POSCO (formerly Pohang Iron and Steel Company), a steel-making company headquartered in Pohang of South Korea. POSCO was to buy 1.2 million tonnes of iron ore from Bailadila every year.

Barely a month later, the strategy became even more clear as Gautam Adani took over iron ore mining in Bailadila on September 20, 2018. Soon enough, POSCO and Adani signed a Rs.37,500 crore steel mill deal. POSCO’s CEO Kwon Oh-Joon had earlier met Prime Minister Modi, with the Adani-POSCO deal demonstrating how the Centre helped Adani take over Bailadila and clinch the deal with the South Korean company.

The blatant refusal of the Centre to permit Telangana take iron ore from Bailadila and to term the Bayyaram Steel Plant a non-feasible project due to lack of iron ore was baffling even then, because, the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant was set up where there is no iron ore whatsoever, neither low grade nor high grade. The VSP takes its iron ore from Bailadila, 500 km away. Still the Centre refused Bayyaram, which had low grade iron ore and is barely 180 km from Bailadila.

“Now we know the real reasons why Modi Govt does not want to honour promise made in the APRA legislation to setup an integrated steel plant at Bayyaram. Shame that his crony’s interests outweigh nation’s for Modi Ji,” Industries Minister KT Rama Rao tweeted in response to Krishank’s expose.