A file photo of Uttar Pradesh's deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya
Paying a visit to Sonbhadra on Friday, Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya credited the report of a massive gold find in the region to Hindu deities Lord Ram and Kashi Vishwanath. “Even Lord Ram wanted no dearth of funds for the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. That’s why he blessed us with the discovery,” Maurya told reporters in Sonbhadra yesterday.
Maurya’s visit came on the day when a local mining official claimed that approximately 3,000 tonnes of gold had been discovered in Sonbhadra. However, the Geological Survey of India (GSI) denied the rumour on Saturday.
In a press released issued to by the Kolkata-headquartered GSI, it stated that it wasn’t a party to any such information. “The GSI, Northern Region, has carried out several exploration works for gold. However, the results were not encouraging to come up with major resources of gold in the Sonbhadra district, Uttar Pradesh,” said the GSI.
The release further stated that the exploratory sessions were carried out by the organisation between 1998 and 2000 and the findings had been handed over to the DGM of Uttar Pradesh for further action.
"Such data was not given by anybody from GSI.... GSI has not estimated such kind of vast resource of gold deposits in Sonbhadra district. The mineralised zone having an average grade of 3.03 grams per tonne of gold is tentative in nature and the total gold which can be extracted from the total resource of 52,806.25 tonnes of ore is approximately 160 kg and not 3,350 tonnes as mentioned in the media,” GSI Director General (DG) M Sridhar told news agency in PTI in Kolkata on Saturday.
(With reporting inputs from Parmeshwar Dayal Srivastava in Sonbhadra)
