Pradhan Attacks Naveen Patnaik Over Alleged Misleading on MMDR Amendment Act

BHUBANESWAR : With the Orissa High Court dismissing Vedanta’s plea to revive a 2004 bauxite pricing and supply arrangement with the Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC), former Union minister and Sambalpur MP Dharmendra Pradhan on Friday used the verdict to attack leader of Opposition and BJD president Naveen Patnaik. He accused Naveen of repeatedly misleading the people of Odisha on the MMDR Amendment Act, 2026. In a post on X, Pradhan said the people of Odisha were not naive enough to accept a repeated lie as truth. “The Orissa High Court order has made it clear that the previous BJD government had paved the way to extend undue favour to private companies by bending rules,” he said. Pradhan said the high court had rejected the claim of 150 million tonnes of bauxite supply made by a specific private industrial house, which had been promised by the BJD government in 2004. The court has made it clear that old promises regarding nxatural resources could not override the law, he said. Pradhan said that following the Narendra Modi government’s amendments to the MMDR Act and Rule 45 of the Minerals (Other than Atomic and Hydro Carbons Energy Minerals) Concession Rules, 2016 (MCR, 2016), a conversion factor was applied to the average sale price of bauxite.