Ms Vineetha Athrey of CNBC-TV18 reported that after Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, Karnataka has also joined the race to woo ArcelorMittal for setting up the proposed 12 million tonne steel plant.

Reportedly, earlier ArcelorMittal had expressed interest in locations outside Orissa and Jharkhand owing to land acquisition related issues in these areas. State government sources have said that they have approached ArcelorMittal and are engaged in an extremely high level initial stage of discussion to try and understand what the requirements could be for this plant if they have to come to Karnataka.

The Karnataka government has also apparently identified two different land parcels of about 4,000 acres each one in the Vijaynagar area and the second in the Koppel Bellary area.

Sources also say that ArcelorMittal is still evaluating options and has not given any go ahead to the Karnataka government and has not told them that it is exiting from Orissa or anything like that. But this is purely an initiative from the Karnataka government to try and woo ArcelorMittal.

Sources also said that Karnataka’s rice iron ore deposits would put it in a stronger position to try and attract ArcelorMittal to Karnataka because the company has also evidently expressed interest in areas that have rich iron ore deposits. We did try and get in touch with sources from the company, which has completely denied knowledge of this. We will have to wait and see where this goes.

(Sourced from CNBC TV 18)