By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, August 28, 2015 : Days after Ail Agarwal managed Vedanta Aluminium Limited announced to shut down its one million ton refinery at Lanjigarh in Kalahnadi district due to want of raw materials, the locals have launched “Save Vedanta Movement”.

A delegation of local people and a couple of MLAs from the district on Friday met chief minister, Naveen Patnaik and steel and mines minister, Prafulla Mallick to apprise them adverse consequences of closure of VAL’s refinery on the livelihood of some 7000 people directly and indirectly dependent on the plant.

“If Vedanta at Lanjigarh will be shut down, thousands of local people working at the refinery will be jobless and livelihood of more than 7,000 people would get affected directly or indirectly,” said former minister and local MLA Balbhadra Majhi.

Later addressing a press conference, Majhi along with his MLA colleagues, Dibyashankar Mishra and Anam Nayak sought the state government’s intervention to ensure that the plant does not get closed down.

Batting for Vedanta, they pointed out that if the plant gets shut down, the backward Kalahandi will once again become a district without a single industry. “Hundreds of youths will be without any work, children would be deprived of education, clothes, mid-day meal which is at present being provisioned by Vedanta”, they said.

Worse still is the fact the tribals, who have been empowered due to the presence of the Vedanta will be forced to become migrant labourers once again.

In spite of having several bauxite deposits in Kalahandi, industrialisation in the district is facing a setback as VAL has already announced shut down of the refinery owing to lack of regular supply of bauxite.