Odisha government steps in to get stalled Posco project going

BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha government has decided to break the logjam at Posco’s 12-million-tonne steel plant project near Paradip a year after a person was killed in group clash. The district collector and senior officers on Thursday held a meeting with local people at Nuagaon village after the activities came to standstill at the project site following violence over construction of coastal road to connect Dhinkia area of Jagatsinghpur district on December 14, 2011.

“The state has decided to start dialogues with all stakeholders and that activity has begun. We have sent a message to the people that we have started work,” district collector SK Mallick said. In June 2011, the government had temporarily withheld the land acquisition process for the Rs 52,000-crore Posco project, billed as the biggest FDI investment in the country, because of opposition from locals.

The Naveen Patnaik ed government then suspended the acquisition process due to stiff opposition and growing participation of women and children and civil society activists in the agitation against the steel project. When in December, the district administration began work at the project site, the violent incident took place bringing the whole land acquisition process to grinding halt.

The Korean Company wants at least 2,700 acres of land for the first and second phase out of the total 4,004 acres it would require for the whole project. The Company was targeting the main construction of the plant in early 2013, and the operation of the first phase 4 MTPA steel plant in 2016.