Udupi judge’s daughter Meghana is 1st lady fighter pilot from South India

The euphoria over the claim that around 3,000 tonnes of gold reserves, worth Rs 12 trillion, have been discovered in Uttar Pradesh’s Sonbhadra district could not last even 24 hours, with the Geological Survey of India (GSI) clarifying on Saturday there had been no such discovery.

The GSI, headquartered in Kolkata, rebutted the claims of the Uttar Pradesh Directorate of Geology and Mining (UPDGM), and said “miscommunication” must have led to the wrong reporting of facts.

M Sridhar, director general of the GSI, said nobody in the agency gave any such data. He said 52,806 tonnes of gold ore was found in Sonbhadra district during the exploration work in 1998-2000. From this reserve, only 160 kg of gold can be extracted.

“There must have been some miscommunication of facts because of which the gold ore deposits have been overestimated. We have written a letter to Uttar Pradesh (UPDGM), stating the facts. The GSI has not estimated such kind of vast resource of gold deposits in Sonbhadra,” Sridhar said.

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The UPDGM had said on Friday that gold deposits were found in Son Pahadi and Hardi areas of the district. Sridhar said while gold ore was found in the area during the GSI’s exploration work in 1998-2000, it had told the state government about the discovery in November last year.

Under the new regulation, which came into effect from 2015, the GSI has to inform the state government when ore deposits are discovered. Earlier, no such action was mandatory. In its report, the GSI estimated that only 3.03 gm of gold can be extracted from a tonne of ore. It also clarified that even the extraction amount was tentative and could not be established for certain.

Moreover, Sridhar said the deposits were spread across only 0.5 sq km in forest land, which made the mining of ore economically unviable. “When there are several mines nearby, we can club it into a block and then it makes sense to mine the ore. But in this case, the deposits are too small to make it viable for any company to mine it,” he said. The GSI usually prioritises its exploration work based on the needs of the Centre. While strategic minerals like tin, cobalt, lithium, beryllium, germanium, gallium, indium, tantalum, niobium, selenium, and bismuth are atop the list in GSI exploration, gold is another commodity on its priority list.

According to the World Gold Council, India has reserves of 630 tonnes of gold.

Mysuru, Mar 7: Former minister and senior Congress leader and sitting MLA Tanveer Sait has shot off a letter to state Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai expressing his dissatisfaction over the slow progress in the investigations regarding the attack on him.

In the letter, which he released to the press on Saturday, he claimed that although the police have already arrested the culprit, but it is yet to find the real masterminds, leaders or organisation behind the attack.

Mr Sait urged the Home Minister to request the police to speed up their investigation and solve the case at the earliest and give him justice.

Bengaluru, Apr 29: Janata Dal-Secular leader and former Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy on Tuesday accused the central government of writing off loans of those who are facing charges of fraud.

In a series of tweets, Kumaraswamy slammed the central government.

"Really? At a time when the whole world is worried about unprecedented economic emergency, writing off Rs 68,000 crore loans of willful big fish defaulters became the best antidote to the economic crisis? And how is 50k cr package to mutual funds going to help the common man?" he tweeted.

In another tweet, Kumaraswamy said that "Billionaire scamsters like Vijay Mallya, Mehul Choksy, Sanjay Junjunwala seem to be very dear to this government".

"Na khaunga, na khane dunga" is yet another jumla unraveled. Billionaire scamsters like Vijay Malya, Mehul Choksy, Sanjay Junjunwala seem to be very dear to this government. The poor are dying by the roadside, farmers are desperate, the middle class is faced with economic doom.

The government has done little to help. But it writes off loans of those who are facing charges of fraud! What patriotism! What nationalism!" he tweeted.