Posco project gets green signal

The Rs 54,000-crore Posco integrated steel plant got the final clearance from the Union environment and forests ministry on Monday. Jairam Ramesh gave the nod for the pending forest clearance to the state government, paving the way for the Korean steel giant to acquire the forest land required for the project. In January, Ramesh had put one last condition before the state government to acquire the forest land. He had asked for an assurance from the state that there will be no rights of people who existed on the land under the Forest Rights Act. The state sent its assurance but Ramesh, having received evidence to the contrary, asked the Naveen Patnaik government to come back again with clarity. The state government wrote back to the Centre on April 29 claiming that the resolutions of the two villages–Govindpur and Dhinkia—opposing the plant and claiming community rights over the forests were illegal. Ramesh moved quickly to decide in favour of the state government, dismissing the village resolutions. For long under pressure from the PMO on the project, passing the order in favour of the state government, Ramesh noted: “Faith and trust in what the state government says is an essential pillar of cooperative federalism.” He decided to pass the buck for adhering to the Forest Rights Act to the state saying, “The primary responsibility for implementing the Forest Rights Act is that of the state government.” Ramesh had earlier bent backwards to accommodate the project by rejecting the recommendations of three of his own committees, including a statutory one. All three had recommended that the provisions of the FRA had not been followed and that the project should be rejected. Orissa, on the other hand, continued to claim that no one had rights over the land it wanted to hand over to Posco.