BELLARY: Sitaram Yechury, MP and Polit Bureau member of Communist Party of India (Marxist), has emphasised the need for a new mineral policy that would prevent draining of exhaustible natural resources, particularly iron ore, give a boost to utilise the resources domestically and export only the end product.

Mr. Yechury was delivering a keynote address on mineral policy, organised at Gandhi Bhavan on Sunday by the district unit of CITU as a pre-cursor to its 12th national conference.

The MP underlined the need to ban export of iron ore. The new policy on mining should ensure value addition to the resources available in the country, generate jobs and aid development of the nation.

He said nothing of the sort was happening while the natural resources were being drained without much benefit flowing to the people.

He expressed concern over the high rate of exports of iron ore.

Iron ore deposits in the country were less than 24 billion tonnes while the exports had gone up by 300 per cent per annum since 2000.

At this rate, all iron ore deposits in the country would be exhausted by 2029, he said.

According to him, the country's iron ore export was around 25 per cent and of this, Karnataka's share was around 36 per cent.B.N.Singh, Joint Managing Director and CEO of JSW Steel Ltd.; and Srinivas Rao, president of Bellary District Sponge Iron Manufacturers' Association, spoke.

T.G. Vittal of Insurance Employees' Association presided over the programe.

Vinod Nowal, Executive Director of JSW Steel; and S. Prasannakumar and Gurushant, secretaries of State CPI (M), were present.

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