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Journalism of Courage
Land acquisition for the first phase of South Korean steel major Poscos proposed steel plant near Paradip was completed on Thursday,more than eight years after the company signed an MoU with the Orissa government.
We have acquired 2,700 acres of land for Poscos first phase of 8 million tonne per annum capacity. Today we demolished 26 betel vines and paid about Rs 41 lakh compensation to the farmers. The acquired land will be handed over to the state-owned Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation soon, said Jagatsinghpur Collector Satya Kumar Mallick.
Mallick said the land acquisition was completed despite vehement opposition from a section of people. The land acquisition for the project was completed in five different phases over two years. We have given compensation to 1,132 people over demolition of betel vines, he said.
So far,Rs 21 crore has been paid to the affected people. The state government had acquired about 2,000 acres by May last year but took a little over one year to acquire another 700 acres in several phases as police lathi-charged protesters several times.
Though Posco initially wanted 4,004 acres of land to set up a 12 MTPA project at an investment of Rs 52,000 crore,it had to scale down its requirement to 2,700 acres following massive protest at Dhinkia village,the epicentre of anti-Posco protest.
