The Orissa government on Friday moved the Supreme Court challenging the Orissa High Court order that quashed its decision to permit South Korean steel major Posco to mine Iron Ore in Sundergarh district of the state. The matter is likely to come up for hearing in November end. The state government had recommended the grant of prospecting licence (PL) to Posco India for the Khandadhar mines for its 12-million-tonne steel plant...

The Rs 51,000-crore Posco steel project in Orissa, that has been delayed for five years, faces the prospect of getting delayed further. The ministry of tribal affairs is now looking at the possibility of whether the South Korean steel project, which also represents the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) in India so far, has actually encroached into the land owned by tribals. The Union ministry of environment and forest (MoEF) has...

Vedanta, Posco and Sindhudurg. The issue is the same — the need for a well-thought-out policy relating to extractive and resource-based industry. The government’s withdrawal of mining permission to Vedanta on the Niyamgiri hills in Orissa’s backward Kalahandi district; the divided verdict by the Gupta Committee on the Posco Iron Ore project; and the environment ministry’s concern on 49 mining licences issued by the Maharashtra government for bauxite and iron...

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...

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...