Cuttack, June 8: Orissa government has accused the six petitioners seeking quashing of the land acquisition proceedings for Posco project of misleading the high court by incorrect and frivolous statements.

Replying to the additional affidavit filed by the six villagers, the government in a fresh affidavit claimed that two of them “do not have any land in villages notified for acquisition”. The other four had claimed to be in the category of “other forest dwellers” when the land they have “had not been classified as forest land”.

The petition was expected to come up before the vacation court today but it was not listed for hearing. The petitioner counsel made special mention but the vacation bench cited time constraint.

The high court had directed the petitioner villagers on May 26 to submit their land ownership details after Orissa government and Posco India Private Limited filed affidavits questioning the maintainability of their petition on the ground that it had no land details in the form of record of rights of the petitioners in the said villages.

Accordingly, the petitioners had filed the additional affidavit on May 30 seeking an interim stay order to “prevent loss of their property and livelihood which is in the process of being violated and taken away by force by the state government and IIDCO”.

Debendra Swain of Dhinkia along with five others — Nityananda Behera (Nuagaon), Nishakar Khatua, Baragi Charan Nayak, Pramod Kumar Bardan and Tushar Kanti Dalai (all of Govindpur) — said that “villages in the Posco project area are under siege and about 20 platoons of policemen are compelling and forcing people to vacate their lands”.

The state government, however, replied: “It is false to state that the entire area is encircled by police authorities who were compelling and forcing the various villagers to vacate their lands and forcibly dispossessing them”.

‘The persons who have lost land or are vacating occupied government lands are happily accepting the compensation money and no untoward incidents have been reported recently,” said Syed Nayar Ahmed, additional secretary in department of revenue and disaster management.

Posco, in its reply, said: “The six petitioners, who belong to Dhinkia, Govindpur and Nuagaon villages, cannot file the writ petition in representative capacity for other land losers and such action is an abuse of process of court.”

“The writ petition has been filed in a camouflaged manner in such a belated stage to sabotage and disrupt the establishment of a steel plant which is for public purpose,” alleged Yong-Kwan Kim, director of Posco India Private Limited in an affidavit.

The petitioners had submitted RoR in the names of either father or grandfather. But they had not filed any legal heir certificate or partition deed to show the extent of their share in the property or any document to show that they had been authorised by other family members to represent their cause, Kim said.

Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation of Orissa land officer Madhuri Mishra also filed an affidavit contending that the petitioners were not entitled to challenge the land acquisition process citing the same ground.