The Orissa government on Monday strongly rebutted the findings of the four-member committee that recently submitted its report on POSCO’s proposed iron and steel plant in the state, saying all due processes had been followed and that there had been no violations of any legal provisions. Senior officers of the Orissa government, including Revenue Divisional Commissioner Pradipto Kumar Mohapatra and Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) Priyanath Padhi, appeared before the...

As POSCO hits green roadblocks, the mega project seems doomed THE ODISHA government is trying hard not to sound defensive, after the Meena Gupta Committee report pulled it up for violating the local people’s forest rights while giving the nod to POSCO for setting up its proposed $12 billion steel plant. Earlier, a joint committee of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) had reached the same conclusion, and reported several...

The Orissa government has filed its response to the Ministry of Envionment and Forest (MoEF) regarding Meena Gupta committee’s reports on Posco project, denying all allegations about violations of Forest Rights Act (FRA) and Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ) at the project site. The state government has reiterated its earlier stand that there are no tribals at the Posco project site and palli sabhas had been conducted as per established procedures and...

The environment ministry has told Vedanta Aluminium to stop all construction on the six-fold expansion of its aluminium refinery at Niyamgiri in Orissa, citing violation of environment laws. In a letter sent to the company today, the Jairam Ramesh-headed ministry also said Orissa’s forest and environment department should take legal action against the firm for the violations in its attempted expansion of the plant from 1 million tonnes per annum (mtpa)...

Paan kheti [betel vine cultivation] is our lifeline…why does the government want to destroy it and force us into being labourers?” asked Niranjan, a 60-plus-year-old farmer who would lose his betel vines to the Posco steel project in Orissa. This is one of the questions that haunted us,when we, a group of US-based researchers interested in the new economy of globalised India, started looking into the Posco project. We had...