Orissa to approach apex court over granting of mining rights to Posco

The Orissa government has decided to move the Supreme Court challenging the high court's order that set aside the mining rights granted to South Korean steel company Posco's Rs54,000 crore project in the state.

"We have no alternative but to take the matter to the Supreme Court after the Orissa high court set aside the state government's recommendation of prospective licences (PL) in favour of Posco-India project," said a senior official at the steel and mines department in Bhubaneswar.

A high court bench, comprising justice BP Das and justice BP Ray, on July 14, disapproved the manner in which the state government recommended Posco-India's name for PL over the iron rich Khandadhar mines, for which about 227 parties had applied.

The high court gave this judgment while disposing a case filed by Geomin Enterprise, which alleged that its application was not taken into consideration by the state government even as it applied for the iron ore reserve in 1991. Sixteen others had also challenged state government's act of recommending PL over Khandadhar mines in favour of Posco-India .

Posco-India, which signed an MoU with the state government to set up a 12mtpa greenfield plant near Paradip, had been waiting for the raw material linkage for more than five years, sources said.