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| Edited By: Neeraj Thakur |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 30, 2018, 03:23 AM IST
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is learnt to have assured Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik here on Monday that the Posco project would be expedited.
The PM’s assurance has come weeks after the environment ministry directed the state government to halt the South Korean company’s project.
The environment ministry had cited the NC Saxena Committee’s report in stalling the Posco project. The Korean company was acquiring land without the permission of the locals in the area, the report had alleged.
“The PM has assured me that the project (Posco) would be expedited,” said Patnaik, after meeting Singh.
It is the largest foreign direct investment project in India and it is a great asset for the country and the state. It will create jobs, direct and indirect,” Patnaik said.
However, Patnaik could not get a similar assurance from the prime minister for the Vedanta mining project.
Speaking on the Vedanta project, Patnaik said he would meet environment minister Jairam Ramesh to discuss the resource company’s plan to mine bauxite in Orissa.
“The Vedanta project was also discussed in the meeting,” Patnaik said, without elaborating on the matter.
The PM’s backing for speeding up the land acquisition process for the Posco project is a clear indication of hard lobbying by the Centre as well as state governments. Earlier this month union minister for steel, Virbhadra Singh had also jumped into the talks for saving the Rs 54,000 crore steel project in Orissa. The steel minister has already spoken with the environment minister for sorting the problems.
Steel secretary Atul Chaturvedi had said on August 11 that the “issue would be resolved in a month.
Posco had signed a memorandum of understanding with Orissa in June 2005 for 12 MT capacity steel plant to be built in three phases by 2016. Since then, the company has struggled to get about 4,000 acres land, as the company management faced opposition from different quarters on the issue of displacement of the locals for land acquisition.
