POSCO green flag likely, but not for Vedanta yet

The Centre is likely to remove green hurdles for Posco’s steel plant in Orissa but bauxite mining for Vedanta Resources may get stuck for now. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Aug 24, 2010, 10:35:57 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Centre is likely to remove green hurdles for Posco’s steel plant in Orissa but bauxite mining for Vedanta Resources may get stuck for now.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has reportedly assured Orissa Chief Minister Navin Patnaik to expedite the project following Steel Minister Virbhadra Singh briefing the PM on the issue over the weekend.

The Environment ministry had stalled Posco’s land acquisition citing violation of Forest Rights Act and has constituted a fact-finding committee.

Following the PM’s intervention the committee has been asked to expedite its report, which would be the basis for the environment ministry’s review of its earlier order. A government official said the ministry has assured hurdles will be removed within a month.

“PM has assured the removal of hindrances,” Patnaik said after meeting Singh on Monday. He told the PM that stalling the R54,000 crore Posco project — the biggest FDI in the country — would dent India’s credibility as an investment destination.

Orissa government had approved the project in 2005.

Patnaik, however, failed to get similar assurance for Vedanta’s bauxite mining project. Vedanta has been charged with violations by the N C Saxena committee and Orissa Pollution Control Board.

While the PM reportedly said the environment scrutiny of the project will be hastened, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh assured of taking a “rational” view of the Forest Advisory Committee recommendation.

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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