Bharat Gold Mines Limited

Bharat Gold Mines Limited or in short BGML is a public sector undertaking of the Government of India.

The Bharat Gold Mines Limited is a PSU under the administrative control of the Ministry of Mines and is now closed. It was set up in 1972 to operate the Kolar Gold Mines taken over by the Central government from the Government of Mysore. It was primarily engaged in gold mining from its captive mines in the Kolar Gold Fields (KGF) located mainly in Karnataka but partly also in Andhra Pradesh. Towards its last years the company also undertook mine development, shaft sinking, manufacture of mining machinery and other fabricated items for outside clients for which it set up a Mine Construction and Engineering Division. Until the time of its closure, BGML was the only world-class gold mining operation in India. The only other gold mine in the country, viz. the Hutti Gold Mine owned by the Karnataka government, is a minuscule operation and is not recognized as a proper gold mine by world standards. During its heyday, BGML's Kolar Gold Mines added to the glory of India as one of the great gold mining operations of the world and Kolar was known as the largest gold production centre in Asia (Ore & Industry in the Far East by H. Foster Bain - NY Times Review, 1927)

The Kolar Gold Mines of BGML were closed down in the year 2001 as the gold ore reserves got exhausted after 150 years of continuous and heavy extraction. Both the exploration agencies of government viz. the Geological Survey of India (GSI) and the Mineral Exploration Corporation Limited (MECL) declared that mining the meagre remaining reserves was not a technically or economically viable option. At the time of its closure BGML had run up losses of more than ₹900 crores.

Though proper mining operations at Kolar started only in 1880 the actual mining of gold ore itself is stated to go back many centuries. There are archival references to the Cholas of South India running small mining pits in the region and there are some references to Kolar being important for similar reasons under the Vijayanagaram rulers. Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan attempting to extract gold from the Kolar pits with the help of French geologists is a recorded concern of the East India Company factors. Certainly, after the defeat of Tipu Sultan in 1799 and the "discovery" of gold in Kolar by surveyor Captain John Warren in 1802, there is curtain on Kolar till about 1850 when Michael Lavalle turned up in England and settled in his estate as a gentleman who made his fortune from the gold mines of Kolar. A joint stock company floated in England by Lavalle & his associates applied for a proper mining license from the Mysore government in 1873, which license was then sold to the British John Taylor & Company.

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