Iron ore supply hit as Maoists damage rail track

RAIPUR - Iron ore supply on a key rail route was suspended Monday after suspected Maoists damaged a portion of track in insurgency-hit Chhattisgarh, a senior official said.

“The train movement on a lone rail line on Kirandul-Kottavalasa (K-K line) under Waltair division of the East Coast Railway (ECR) was suspended after 17 wagons of a goods train derailed with three engines around 1.30 a.m. Monday,” H.L. Luwang, senior divisional commercial manager of the ECR, told IANS over phone.

The accident site is close to Dilimili station in restive Bastar region, some 330 km south of state capital Raipur. The rail authorities have said that Maoists damaged a 200-metre stretch of the track.

Luwang said the train was carrying 4,000 tonnes of iron ore to Andhra Pradesh port city Visakhapatnam from Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district-based Bailadila iron ore mines of National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC), India’s largest public sector iron ore producer and exporter.

Luwang termed the incident as “a huge loss” to the railways and said senior officials have rushed to the site, some 30 km from Jagdalpur, the district headquarters of Bastar region, where work is on at a war footing to restore train services.

It would take at least another 24-48 hours to restore services, he said.

S.P. Himanshu, assistant general manager of the NMDC based in Chhattisgarh, told IANS, “The daily dispatches of around 56,000 tonnes iron ore supply from Kirandul and Bacheli mining facilities have been halted since Monday.”