Jairam Ramesh asks orissa to give more info on Posco

India's biggest foreign direct investment (FDI) from Korean steelmaker Posco had received another blow from environment minister Jairam Ramesh, days before the state government was to complete the process to seek final environment clearance.

Updated on: Apr 12, 2011, 24:48:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Even as the Orissa government announced on Monday that it was set to complete the process to seek final environment clearance for Korean steel major Posco, environment minister Jairam Ramesh has presented another hurdle to the project.

Hours after Orissa CM Naveen Patnaik announced the state government would submit an assurance report to the environment ministry — a mandatory condition to get clearance — Ramesh asked for more.

He wants comments from the state government on a representation by the Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti that the state government's assurance would be false and that the provisions of the Forest Rights Act have not been implemented at the site.

The minister, in his January 31 order allowing Posco's steel plant in Jagatsinghpur, had said the final nod would depend on an assurance from the state government that FRA provisions have been implemented.

In Posco's case, the provision that needs to be met is that the rights of locals be notified before diversion of forestland for the plant.

"Rights of tribals have not been complied with, despite submission of claim forms," said Prashant Paikray, spokesperson of the samiti.

The Orissa government is expected to tell the environment ministry there are no other traditional forest-dwellers on the 2,900 hectares of forest land.

The samiti has provided evidence to the ministry suggesting they are traditional forest-dwellers and said they would initiate legal action against the state government for failing to implement FRA in Dhinkia and Govindpur villages.

“The palli sabhas (forest rights committees) will issue a notice to the state government for false statements over the past year…” the samiti said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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