Police personnel stand guard as anti-Posco protesters demonstrate in Gobindpur on Sunday. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar / Paradip, Feb. 3: Police and government officials today entered the troubled Gobindpur and demolished 13 betel vines to acquire land for the proposed Posco steel plant.

Leaders of Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), the outfit spearheading the agitation against the project, alleged that the police used batons, which left 25 persons, including three women, injured. The charge was promptly denied by the government.

Jagatsinghpur’s CPI MP Bibhu Prasad Tarai visited the area and demonstrated with PPSS leaders at Patna near Gobindpur.

The project, the capacity of which has now been scaled down from 12 million to 8 million tonnes per annum, has been one of the major flashpoints in the state’s industrial belt since the state government signed an MoU with Posco in 2005.

With PPSS leading the resistance movement, all work at the project site near Paradip in Jagatsinghpur district came to a halt on December 16, 2011, following violence over the construction of a coastal road. Work at the site failed to take off despite an assurance by Union minister of commerce Anand Sharma to the South Korean company officials on January 28 that the Centre was committed to its “smooth” progress.

Today’s foray into Gobindpur, the epicentre of the anti-Posco movement, took the residents by surprise. By the time they could recover their wits, a large number of betel vineyards had been pulled down.

Jagatsinghpur collector Satya Kumar Mallick claimed that the exercised was conducted with the consent of the villagers. “No force was used,” he said.

However, PPSS chief Abhay Sahu did not agree. “It was a midnight operation with force being used on unarmed people. About 25 villagers, including three women, were injured in the police attack. The administration’s drive was undemocratic and uncivilised. It would be stubbornly opposed,” he said, adding that there were no women cops when the police beat up women and children.

Tarai, who visited the village this afternoon, condemned the use of force to acquire land for the plant.

But Jagatsinghpur superintendent of police Satyabrata Bhoi claimed that the police behaved with utmost restraint. “No force was used on anti-Posco activists. The police were forced to chase away the assembled villagers as a curfew had been imposed in the area. About 50 persons have been taken into preventive custody,” he said.

Sources said 13 betel vineyards were pulled down today. The owners of the plots have their consent for the demolition, they claimed. The entire exercise was recorded and compensation cheques were paid on the spot.

Work at the site has been halted several times in the past despite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s eagerness to push the Rs 52,000-crore project, India’s largest FDI, in the larger interest of Indo-Korean relations. The work stopped in 2010 and 2011 after committees set up by the Union ministry of environment and forests raised objections on the ground that it had failed to address the settlement issues under the Forest Rights Act.

In view of growing resistance, Posco has not only scaled down its project size from 12 million tonnes per annum to eight million tonnes, it has also reduced its land requirement from 4,004 acres to 2,700 acres. The government claims to have acquired 2,000 acres.