CB BureauAlthough Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has allowed
Posco to resume work, the steel plant does not seem to be coming up soon. The
locals in Jagatsinghour, the proposed plant site, have intensified their
agitation against the project.
Criticizing Ramesh, Posco
Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), the organization spearheading the agitation
against the Rs 51,000 crore, 12 million tonnes steel plant at Paradip in Orissa,
said that they would re-erect barricades to block entry of government and
company officials and police personnel into the project site.
The leaders termed the recent clearance as ‘sabotage’
against the villagers of Dhinkia, Nuagaon and Gadkujang panchayats.
PPSS accused Ramesh of disregarding recommendations of two central teams sent by his own ministry on violation of the Forest Rights Act. They
say that 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 got claims under the Forest
Rights Act of 2006.
It should be noted here that Ramesh has only allowed the
company to resume work while the final clearance will be given when Orissa
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s government provides an assurance to the centre
that there are no traditional forest dwellers at the proposed site.
Vedanta lied, says
environment ministry
The union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) on February
3 submitted an affidavit in the Orissa high court stating that Vedanta
Aluminium Ltd’s application for expansion of its Lanjigarh refinery cannot be considered since the company has seriously violated environment laws.
The affidavit reads that Vedanta had started the expansion
project illegally without getting an environment clearance. ‘Vedanta Aluminium
Ltd stated that they had started the project work in May 2009, after conducting
a public hearing in the area in April 2009, but the records of the ministry
show that expansion work was initiated in the area in November 2008 itself.’
The ministry further stated that Vedanta had not mentioned
that it had begun the expansion work in the environment impact assessment (EIA)
report submitted to MoEF on June 22, 2009, for seeking an environment clearance
for the expansion project.
Vedanta had moved the Orissa high court on November 12 last
year challenging the ministry’s order of halting its plans for the expansion of
the alumina refinery capacity.
In November last year, the centre had issued a circular
laying down the procedure for projects that have taken up expansion work without
prior environment clearance. The circular stated that all cases of violations
submitted to the ministry would be reconsidered. After notification of the
circular, the company had revised its petition, praying for a court directive
for implementing the said order, so that it could go ahead with the expansion
project. Hearing the petition on January 10, the high court had directed the centre to file its counter-affidavit in the matter.