According to an official in the Andhra Pradesh state government, a government order permitting exploitation of the bauxite reserves by Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corp. (APMDC)—the mining arm of the government— and by other private aluminum companies has been kept in abeyance because of threats from the extremists.

He said that over the past several decades, extremist activities across the forest belt had been suppressed by increased policing and counter-offensives by military and paramilitary forces. But the extremists, over the past few months, were successful in tapping into resentment and opposition by indigenous residents to mining in forest land, expanding their influence and taking territorial control over large tracts of land believed to be rich in bauxite reserves, the official added.

In October, the return of extremism was marked by abduction of three leaders of the ruling political party of the province. Though the extremists released the three after 10 days, the message relayed through the captives was that the provincial government should scrap all bauxite mining projects and that leaders of the ruling party should actively participate in the antimining campaign, the official said.

The bauxite projects that triggered extremist activities include a joint venture between National Aluminium Co. Ltd. (Nalco) and Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corp. (APMDC). The joint venture has been granted access to 250 million tons of bauxite reserves in the province and Nalco proposed to invest $1 billion in setting up mining and refinery project and another $1.5 billion on a smelter in the second phase.

Anrak Aluminium, a joint venture of Penna Industries and Ras Al Khaimah Investments, UAE, proposed to develop a bauxite project with capacity of 1.5 million mt/y. And Vedanta, which had built an alumina refinery at Lanjigarh in Odisha but had to stop operations there after failing to secure a raw material source, had been hoping to source bauxite from the neighboring mining project in Andhra Pradesh.