POSCO gets Jairam green signal

The ministry had granted the forest approval on January 31 this year but with a rider — it wanted the state government to give a categorical written assurance that no violation of the Forest Rights Act was happening at the project site. Orissa took two-and-a-half months to give such an assurance. In the meantime,people protesting against the project sent documents to the ministry,claiming the Act was not being implemented. It attached resolutions of gram sabhas from two of the eight affected villages,saying the locals were not in favour of diverting forest land to the project.

A formal clearance was again held back and the state government was asked to respond to the claims by the anti-POSCO protesters. The state government wrote back on April 29,saying the two resolutions were “fake”.

It pointed out that out of a total of 3,445 voters of Dhinkia,one of the two villages,only 69 people had signed the resolution. Similarly,only 64 out of the 1,907 voters of Gobindpur,the other village,had signed.

While giving his final ruling,Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said he had little option but to believe the assertions made by the state government. “Faith and trust in what the state government says is an essential pillar of cooperative federalism… Beyond a point,the bona fides of a democratically elected state government cannot always be questioned by the Centre,” he said.

“This approval would,however,be subject to the condition that in addition to the conditions already imposed… POSCO would also bear the cost of regeneration of an equivalent amount of open,degraded forest land in a district to be determined and indicated by the state government,” he added.

Ramesh pointed out that the MoU signed between the state government and POSCO in 2005 had lapsed and would have to be renewed. He said he would like to see that the fresh MoU did not have provisions for export of iron ore.

Asserting that they were “fully committed to the project”,POSCO India head Vikash Sharan said,“We are very happy that after a long wait,the final orders for forest diversion have been issued… The only clause was on allowing swapping of Indian iron ore with imported ore. But that too has been shelved as we are introducing the Finex technology for the proposed project,which can handle low-grade ore.”

—With inputs from Priyadarshi Siddhanta