Just a few months after the declaration of Kappatagudda as a conservation reserve, a mining company has applied for permission to extract gold from the reserve.
Kappatagudda, an expansive forest range, was at the centre of a nearly year-long confrontation between locals and the State government. Last week, Ramgad Minerals and Mining Ltd. (RMML), a Baldota group company, had applied for 39.9 hectares (around 98.6 acres) of forest land for setting up ‘Sangli gold mines’ at Jelligere in Kappatagudda, Gadag district. Permission for forest clearance was submitted on September 15 to the Ministry of Environment and Forests. While the State government had declared 17,872.248 hectares area as Kappatagudda Conservation Reserve on April 11, the RMML had challenged this in the High Court, seeking the exclusion of 800 hectares (encapsulating their mining area).
The search for gold is not new in the foothills of Kappatagudda. For eight years at the turn of the previous century, Dharwad Gold Mines Ltd. extracted gold from ‘Gadag Gold Fields’. The company wound up in 1912 as the recovery of gold was poor.
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Interest in mining resumed in 2001 after RMML received a reconnaissance permit. While the company had, between 2006 and 2010, applied for diversion of the land, the fresh application was due to the “recent declaration of area as a Conservation Reserve” as notified on April 11, 2017.
“As it has been declared as a protected area now, we are following the procedures laid out, including approaching the State and national boards for wildlife. We have a mining lease and these are the procedures to be followed to execute it,” said Sanjay Kumar, CEO (Gadag and Kerala), RMML. The proposal has environmental clearance given in 2009.
According to RMML, there is around 1.6 million tonnes of gold, and nearly 0.3 million tonnes will be extracted annually for six years through open cast mining in three pits. Their exploration had shown that the areas were identified as “moderate grade of gold mineralisation”. According to RMML, the ₹80-crore project will net ₹240 crore for the government, with “no environmental loss or forest degradation”. However, this proposal is expected to run into legal trouble as environmentalists and residents have expressed opposition to any mining in the region.
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“The fight for saving Kappatagudda is not over yet. The very purpose of declaring it as a conservation reserve is to save the biodiversity-rich hills,” said environmentalist Santhosh Martin, who is also a party in the ongoing legal fight over Kappatagudda.
The gold processing unit to be set up some 6 km away at Attikatti village is also in the court. “For the past eight years, we have been seeking the return of land bought from 13 Lambani families, and we will oppose any mining there,” said Ravikant Angadi, the Gadag district unit president of Karnataka Banjara Lambani Kalyana Sangha. While the district administration had ordered the returning of over 100 acres of land to the Lambanis, the RMML has challenged this in the High Court.