Y Mohammed Kunhi, Shafi Saadi among five new members nominated to State Wakf Board

Bengaluru, May 12: In a scathing attack on the ruling BJP in Karnataka and warning the Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa government against any move to amend the Labour laws and APMC through an ordinance, former chief minister and JDS leader H D Kumaraswamy on Tuesday asked Mr Yediyurappa to work in the interest of the people and not to budge under any pressure from the Centre or to please party bosses.

Speaking to media here on Tuesday he questioned the urgency to bring forward such ordinances on important subjects and asked the government to have a public debate on it and also discuss it in the assembly.

“I'm warning the government… I have been watching everything silently till now, I have not caused any embarrassment to the government. I want to tell the government, don’t push us to do it,” Kumaraswamy said

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.

ALSO READ: 2,900-tonne gold mine found in Sonbhadra, 4 times that of India's reserves

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.

Tumakuru, Jan 8: RSS leader Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat stoked controversy on Wednesday by stating that 'Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is full of traitors'.

He was addressing the media after taking part in a pro-CAA rally organised by National Citizens Forum near the office of the deputy commissioner of the district here.

Bhat said, “JNU is full of traitors. Congress and communist parties have been generating anti-nationals there. But there is no need to close the university down. Modi government will handle it.”

“Nationalism should be infused among the students there through love and trust. They should be made to realize what the truth is,” he said.