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Orissa High Court |
Cuttack, March 11: The proposed Rs 3,400-crore Machhakata open cast coal mine project in Angul has hit a roadblock with Orissa High Court imposing restrictions on the land acquisition process for it.
The court has issued an interim order on petitions seeking judicial intervention against the land drive as the project has allegedly posed an environmental threat to nine villages.
The court, however, allowed a public hearing on the project’s environmental impact on the villages, organised by the Odisha State Pollution Control Board with the help of district administration.
“The division bench of Chief Justice A.K. Goel and Justice A.K. Rath, before which the petitions came up today, issued an interim direction for stopping the entire land acquisition proceedings for the project and fixed April 13 for hearing on the matter,” petitioners’ counsel Trilochan Barik told The Telegraph.
Srinivas Sahu, Patitapabana Gadanayak and Sridhar Majhi, representing six of the nine villages in the core zone of the project area, had filed three petitions, two of them public interest litigations.
On May 17 last year, the high court had issued a stay order on the state pollution control board’s notification for public hearing on environmental impact of the project in nine villages of the area.
The court had also issued notices, seeking response from the commissioner-cum-secretary of the state forest and environment department, pollution control board chairman, Idco managing director, Angul collector and the managing director of Mahaguj Collieries Limited.
“The bench, however, modified the court’s May 17, 2013, stay order on the public hearing and allowed the pollution control board to conduct it,” Barik said.
“Our basic contention is that the project posed a threat to the villages,” he said.
The project envisages development of Machhakata coal block with a coal washery at Chendipada of Angul district by Mahaguj Collieries Limited.
Around 3,000 hectares are to be acquired by the Industrial Development Corporation of Odisha (Idco) for the project. Of this, 2,640 hectares are private land.
The nine villages, which stand to be affected by the land acquisition, are Bagadia, Machhakuta Jungle, Saipoinali, Machhakuta, Ghuntulipari, Similipal, Basantpur, Deurijharan and Podapoda.
Coal reserve in the 3,023-hectare project area is estimated at 1,244.37 million tonnes. It is envisaged that the proposed quarry will have a target capacity of 30 million tonnes a year and a life of 48 years, including two years for construction.