A question mark hangs over the `54,000-crore Posco steel project with the ministry of environment forests having wide-ned the ambit of the Meena Gupta panel looking into whether this steel plant is meeting the diktats of Environmental Protection Act.
This is the second Central team to be visiting the Posco site in one month. The first team, led by Dr N.C. Saxena comprising members of the National Forest Rights Committee, had looked into allegations of the violation of the Forests Rights Act by both Posco and the Vedanta group. Such a move is bound to upset Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik who had met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week to raise concerns over the delay in granting environmental clearance to projects like Posco and the Vedanta bauxite mining initiative.
The Posco steel project is the largest FDI venture in the country. It was on the basis of the recommendations of the Saxena panel that MoEF had asked the state to stop land acquisition at the site. Complying with the missive, the Orissa state government had halted the land acquisition for the Posco project in the Jagatsinghpur district two days after the MoEF had asked them to stop work.
Posco requires around 4,004 acres of which 2,900 acres is forest land. The Meena Gupta panel, which is presently in Bhubaneshwar, had arrived at Jagatsinghpur on August 27 and has spent three days looking into issues like land acquisition, settlement of claims, tribal rights and other related issues. On August 28, her team visited panchayats in Dhinkia, Nuagaon and Gadkujang to interact with villagers in order to learn about violation of FRA provisions.
Ms Gupta admitted, “We are listening to people from both sides so that there is no confusion on the issue. According to information provided by the concerned officials, there are no tribal groups living in the proposed plant site,” she said.
However, with the new mandates at its disposal, the deadline of this panel has now been extended from August 28 to September 28.
In an order issued on August 28, the MoEF asked the panel to “review compliance with statutory provisions, approvals, clearances and permissions under various statues, rules and notifications.” The panel had emphasised that both Vedanta and Posco were guilty of violating the FRA process which had not gone beyond the initial stages and it was therefore “incorrect and misleading” on the part of the administration to claim that there had been no other Traditional Forest Dwellers in possession of forest land for three generations.
MoEF minister Jairam Ramesh had also reiterated recently in the Rajya Sabha that Posco was being investigated for alleged forest land violation. “Any violation of forest act will not be tolerated,” the minister said.