Day after the news of the discovery of gold deposits estimated to be around 3,000 tonnes in Sonbhadra district of Uttar Pradesh, the Geological Survey of India (GSI) on Saturday rejected any such finding and issued a clarification that the estimated reserve is about 160 kg.

Now, the question arises...how did the information spread?

The marked area on the map shows Sonbhadra
The marked area on the map shows Sonbhadra.Google Maps

An investigation by IANS revealed that the entire thing started after the correspondence between the mining department of Uttar Pradesh and the collector of Sonbhadra got leaked.

READ | No discovery of 3000-tonne gold deposits in UP's Sonbhadra: GSI

IANS has a letter dated January 31, 2020, from the Directorate of Mines and Minerals (Mining Directorate) of Uttar Pradesh, which has estimated a total of 2943.26 tonnes gold in Sona Pahadi block and 46.15 kg gold in Hardi block of Sonbhadra district. Thus, this letter states that there are likely to be about 3,000 tonnes of gold in the district.

Prices of the safe haven yellow precious gold metal jumped 0.2 per cent to $1,751.80 an ounce after finance ministers in the heavily fiscal-affected eurozone and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to reduced Greece's long-term debt.
Reuters | Representational

This letter also states that the report of the auction of minerals has been made available by the GSI. The land is to be identified before the auction of blocks of minerals. The seven-member team has also been informed to extract the gold. In the letter, information has also been given on behalf of the District Magistrate (Collector) of Sonbhadra.

The GSI stated that the organisation is not a party to the news reports published by various media houses about the estimation of the amount of gold.

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