“In Orissa the Government vandalism is poised to destroy livelihood of farmers on 200 acres of land where precious natural resource of betel vines are grown,” he said.
According to him, the POSCO Virodhi Pratibandh Samiti led by Abhay Sahu, who was jailed, had successfully stalled the land acquisition by force and villagers had formed a human chain to stall police entry into the area last week.”The campaign will commence once again on June 17th when the state forces are expected to begin land acquisition exercises,” he said.
POSCO had signed an agreement with the Orissa government in 2005 for setting up an integrated steel plant with the total capacity of 12 million tonnes per annum at an investment of Rs 51,000 crore. The entire project will require about 1621 hectares of land, of which about 1253 hectares is forest land.
After the initial hurdles, the ministry of Environment and Forests gave clearance for the steel plan with 28 additional conditions and for the POSCO port with 32 additional conditions in January this year. The ministry had also sought assurance from the Orissa government for the compliance of the Forest Rights Act.