Paradip, May 15: The Jagatsinghpur district administration today announced that it would complete the land acquisition process for the big-ticket Posco steel project by May 31.
Despite protests by members of the anti-Posco brigade, betel vines were dismantled and trees felled at Gobindpur village coming under the territorial limits of the Posco steel project. Side by side, excavation work of the earmarked project boundary line has also been carried out, said an official.
“The land acquisition process has reached its concluding phase. Within a fortnight, the process will come to an end,” Paradip additional district magistrate Surajit Das told The Telegraph.
“The betel vineyard dismantling work has made considerable progress. It will be finished within five days. So far, 236 betel vineyards have been demolished and 61 more such structures will be pulled down,” Das said.
“Tree-felling has become a time-consuming affair as about 83,000 trees are still left untouched. We expect to cut down the remaining trees by the end of this month,” he said.
An estimated 2,550 acres is under control of the state-run Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation. The South Korean steel major requires 2,700 acres to begin construction of the eight-million-tonne per annum steel plant here in the first phase. The corporation has transferred 1,703 acres to Posco, Das said.
“A total of 12 betel vines were dismantled and 236 horticultural plants cut down today. We have cleared a large chunk of kewda plantations by using excavators along the sand-filled fields. About 100-metre of boundary line excavation work was also successfully carried out today,” he said.
In a related development, anti-Posco activists, led by CPI leader Narayan Reddy, held a rally at Patana village, about half-a-kilometre from the land acquisition place, demanding release of their leader Abhay Sahu, who has been arrested for the death of three persons in an explosion on March 2.
The CPI-backed Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samity pledged to oppose the project till it was scrapped.
