New Delhi : India’s state-run miner NMDC is expected to extract 6,500 carats of diamonds, worth $3.4 million, this fiscal year from ores in a mine near a tiger reserve, after receiving mining clearances last year, two sources said.
The miner faced delays in securing environmental clearances and had to halt mining for over three years at the Panna mine in the central state of Madhya Pradesh due to its proximity to the tiger reserve.
NMDC, which has not yet started new rounds of mining, is focusing on extracting and processing diamonds from ore stockpiles at its Panna mine, the sources said.
Since resuming operations, the company has extracted diamonds worth 3,700 carats or $1.93 million from the ore, said the sources, who did not wish to be named before NMDC publicly shared its diamond output data.
The mine, covering an area of 275.96 hectares (681.91 acres), first began operations in the early 1970s and is the only mechanized diamond mine in India.
