LUCKNOW: A day after UP government’s Department of Geology and Mining (DGM) claimed made tall claims about the discovery of over 3000 tonnes of gold reserves in the tribal district of Sonbhadra, the Geological Survey of India (GSI) came out, on Saturday, to contradict it saying that only 160 kg gold could be extracted from the ores spotted in the range.
The UP government's DGM, on Friday, had confirmed that over 3,000 tonnes of gold reserves were found in the tribal district.
However, the Geological Survey of India on Saturday said there had been no discovery of gold deposits to the tune of over 3,000 tonnes as claimed by a district mining official.
In a statement issued from its headquarters based in Kolkata, GSI said that it was not a party to the information published through media reports.
“GSI has not estimated such kind of vast resources of gold deposits in Sonbhadra district of Uttar Pradesh,” said the statement undersigned by Director and PRO Ashish Kumar Nath.
The statement further claimed that though GSI had carried out several explorations in the lookout for gold, “the results were not encouraging to come-up with major resources for gold in Sonbhadra.”
The GSI clarified that the exploration was carried out in field season in 1998-99 and 1999-2000 and the related report was handed over to DGM UP for information and further necessary action.
It further explained that after exploration, “the GSI estimated a probable category resource of 52806.25 tonnes of Ore with possible extraction of average grade 3.03 grams gold per tonne of ore.”
“The materialized zone having an average grade of 3.03gram gold per tonne of ore is tentative in nature and the total gold which can be extracted from the total resource of 52806.25 tonnes of ore is approx 160 kg instead of 3350 tonnes as mentioned in some media reports,” said the statement.
Notably, the district mining officer-in-charge VK Maurya had confirmed to the media persons on Friday that huge reserves of gold were found in the Son Pahadi and Hardi blocks of Sonbhadra.
According to official figures, deposits in Son Pahadi was estimated to be around 2943.26 tonnes while the Hardi block was reported to have 646.16 kg of reserves.