Protestors to seal all routes to proposed Posco site

BHUBANESWAR: Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti, the organisation spearheading the agitation against Posco's 12-million tonne steel plant at Paradip in Orissa, will re-erect barricades to block entry of government and company officials and police personnel into the project site.

Leaders from Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti on Tuesday congregated at Patana under Dhinkia panchayat where they criticised Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh for clearing the Posco project, despite opposition from locals.

The leaders termed the recent clearance as a 'sabotage' against villagers of Dhinkia, Nuagaon and Gadkujang panchayats.

"We will seal all routes to the proposed Posco site. We will intensify our agitation in protest against Ramesh's approval to the project," Samiti president Abhay Sahoo said at the meeting. It was the Posco Pratirodh Sangram that had lifted barricades in July last year to facilitate visit of teams from the MoEF, after laying siege to the area for nearly five years. Among the leaders gathered at the rally were representatives from political parties such as CPI, CPM, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and some social activists.

They accused Ramesh of succumbing to pressure from multinational corporations by disregarding recommendations of two Central teams sent by his own ministry on violation of the Forest Rights Act. Ramesh chose to overlook findings of the Meena Gupta Committee and the NC Saxena-Devendra Pandey Committee which said that people in the project area were other traditional forest dwellers and had had claims under the Forest Rights Act of 2006.

CPI leader Naryan Reddy said that while the environment minister had earlier stated that violation of the FRA is illegal, "he has now legitimatized it by clearing the project," said Reddy. The leaders also took strong exception to the minister's decision to give green signal for Posco's proposed captive port project.