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)...

In yet another blow to the Anil Agarwal-owned Vedanta Alumina Ltd , the environment ministry has decided to halt the company’s plans of expanding its Rs 4,600-crore Lanjigarh refinery in Orissa. The existing one million tonne Lanjigarh refinery will, however, continue to be in operation. The ministry has found the Lanjigarh refinery’s expansion to be “unauthorised” and in serious violation of environmental laws. It has decided to revoke the permission given...

Arcelormittal’s plans to set up a six million tonne per annum (mtpa) steel plant in Bellary district of Karnataka is on track, with farmers coming forward to accept the compensation package for land acquisition. The world’s largest steel producer had zeroed in on Kuditini in Bellary district to set up its plant and laid out a land requirement of around 4,000 acres. However, these plans were opposed by some farmer groups...

The Orissa government will reply to the queries made by the Centre on the Meena Gupta panel report on Posco project in the next three days, Chief Secretary B K Patnaik said on Wednesday. “We will reply to the Centre on the panel’s reports within three days,” Patnaik told reporters here. The state government did not comment on the reports of the committee for the past two days. Smarting under the Union...

Claims about the benefits of Posco's $12 billion integrated steel project to Orissa's economy and job market come from a study by an “independent” research organisation — but was paid for by Posco itself. In January 2007, the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) published a report on ‘Social Cost Benefit Analysis of the POSCO Steel Project in Orissa,' which claimed that the project would directly and indirectly generate 8.7...