Orissa chief minister said the environment minister's letter to the state putting on hold the forest clearance to the POSCO greenfield steel cum captive power plant will be sent to forest department for verification.
Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik today said environment minister Jairam Ramesh's letter to the state putting on hold the forest clearance to the POSCO greenfield steel cum captive power plant and asking to stick to provisions of Forest Rights Act, will be sent to forest department for verification.
"After forest department's scrutiny, we will respond to the MoEF," Patnaik said here reacting to the MoEF putting on hold the forest clearance to the Rs 52000 crore steel-cum-captive power plant of POSCO.
The state government in its FRA compliance report to the Centre had claimed that not a single person residing in the area earmarked for Posco project, can be categorised as other traditional forest dweller (OTFD) under provisions of the FRA, official sources said here.
While FRA provisions said people residing continuously on forest land for over 75 years can be categorised as OTFDs, the state government had found the Burdwan Estate had merged with Kujanga tehsil in 1952.
The revenue department had accorded forest status to land in two villages, Jatadhar and Bhuyanpal of Gadakujang panchayat in 1961.
Therefore, the people are living there for 49 years and not 75 years to meet the parameters set under the FRA, the state government had said in the compliance report, the sources said.
Meanwhile, Abhay Sahu, Posco Pratirodh Sangharsh Samiti (PPSS) president said in the 1930 record of rights and settlement maps the area was described as forest and betel vines and the Maddox settlement report of 1890 had said the area was famous for forest and betel vine cultivation.
Anti-Posco agitators under him burnt copies of the report at Patana, one of the seven villages demarcated to house the South Korean steel major's proposed mega steel plant near Paradip, during the day in protest against the 'illegal' FRA compliance report of the state.
"People supporting us including activists of CPI, CPI-M, Forward Bloc, RJD, JMM and SP will also burn the government's 'illegal' document submitted to the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF)," he said.
The anti-project activists also criticised the district collector of Jagatsinghpur for his report to the secretary, the scheduled tribe and scheduled caste development department claiming that the palli sabha resolutions of Dhinkia and Govindpur gram panchayats adopted on February 21 and 23, were illegal and demanded action against him for violating FRA.
"The collector, who heads the district level committee on FRA is not the authority to decide who are OTFDs. It is rather the sub-collector, head of the subdivisional committee who is empowered to take a decision in this respect. But the sub-collector is no where in the picture.
"If the Centre gives its consent for diversion of forest land for the project based on the state government's illegal documents, we will be forced to intensify agitation," Sahu said.
The collector had said in his report that the documents submitted by PPSS spokesman Prasant Paikray were forged and fabricated and manufactured by Sisir Mohapatra, the sarpanch of Dhinkia gram panchayat who is also secretary of PPSS.
The sole intention of the PPSS was to stall the process of diversion of forest land for Posco project, the report had said and accused the sarpanch of misusing his official position to mislead the MoEF.
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