Kolar Gold Fields K.G.F or Kolar Gold Fields is a mining town in Bangarpet Taluka, in the Kolar District of Karnataka state, India. It includes the township of the same name, viz. KGF, where reside mainly the families of the employees of BGML and BEML. KGF is about 30 kilometers from Kolar and 100 kilometers from Bangalore. To the east of KGF is a ridge of hills of which Dod Betta hill, 3195 feet above sea level. The town was known for gold mining for over a century, which was eventually closed on 2001 due to low level of gold production. The resources now remaining under the ground are only about 3 million tonnes of gold ore. The tradition of mining gold at Kolar started at least as early as the first millennium BC with linkages to the Indus Valley civilization. Golden objects found in Harappa and Mohenjo-daro have been traced to KGF through an impurities-analysis assay, as the impurities include 11% silver concentration, found only in KGF ore.[citation needed] Pliny, a Roman historian who passed in this area in 77 C.E. wrote about gold and silver mines.[1] The Champion reef at the Kolar gold fields was mined to a depth of 50 meters during the Gupta period in the fifth century A.D. Subsequently, the metal continued to be mined during the Chola period in the 9th and 10th century AD, the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565, and later by Tipu Sultan, the leader of Mysore state. The scale of the operations grew at each stage by the digging of small to large pits.[citation needed] Renewed interest in the Kolar gold fields occurred towards the beginning of the nineteenth century. The ancient gold workings, other workings which may have been 200 to 600 years old and the workings of Tipu Sultan were all located by Captain Warren in 1802. In 1873, M.F. Lavelle, an Irish soldier who returned from New Zealand after fighting Maori war and settled in Bangalore, applied to the Mysore Government for the exclusive privilege of mining in the Kolar district.[1] His request was granted and he commenced operations by sinking a shaft near Uirgam (Oorgaum) in 1875, but, finding that large capital would be required, in the following year and with the approval of the government, Lavalle transferred all his rights and concessions to Major General G. de la Poer Beresford. General Beresford formed a syndicate known as the Kolar Concessionaries which took up the matter in earnest, and gradually acquired most of the area now known as the Kolar Gold Fields. However, large-scale mining only came in the 1890s under the British firm John Taylor & Company which did much of the prospecting and mining with more skilled manpower and sophisticated machinery. The principal mines in the Gold Fields starting with Michael F. Lavelle in 1864 to the mines developed by John Taylor & Company up to 1905 were: Later, after 1956, BGML amalgamated the Champion and Mysore mines and started the Yeppamana and Old Baisanathan Mines. The mines were taken over by the Government of Mysore in 1956 and by the Ministry of Finance, Government of India in 1962. They were handed over to the government company called Bharat Gold Mines Limited under the Ministry of Mines in 1972. The Bharat Gold Mines Limited has thus come out of various combinations and permutations. The company has the record of having Morarji Desai as its chairman (when it was with the Finance Ministry) and some of the erstwhile chief Ministers of Mysore State (when it was with the government of Mysore). The gold mines of KGF were closed down by BGML in 2001 due to reducing deposits and increasing costs. Since then a legal struggle is being waged by the ex-employees of BGML against the Ministry of Mines. In September 2003 the Karnataka High Court directed the government to hand over the mines to the employees and in December 2006, the Ministry undertook in court to do so at a market determined price. In July, 2010 after protracted litigation, the High Court of Karnataka finalized the terms and procedure of transfer.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 07:38:46 +0000