Bhubaneswar, Oct. 22: The cabinet committee on investments and the project monitoring group today decided to send Odisha’s clarifications sought by the Centre with regard to iron-prospecting lease recommendation for Posco project at Paradip.

Last week, the Centre had sought information from the state government on how much of the mining land, sought by Posco, was notified as iron ore bearing areas, where commercial mining is allowed. Mining in the non-notified areas needs approvals from more agencies than that in the notified areas.

Posco had asked the ministry of mines to explore iron ore over an area of 682.54 hectares for its eight million tonnes project. However, the Centre wanted the state government to submit separate proposals for notified and non-notified areas before taking a call on the issue.

Besides the Posco project, the committee today decided to set timelines for various stages of approvals for other big-ticket projects worth more than Rs 1,000 crore. Steps would be taken to clear the pubic sector projects on a priority basis.

The committee reviewed 35 projects that included 23 public sector ones, including Mahanadi Coalfields Limited, Indian Oil Corporation Limited, National Highways Authority of India and the Indian Railways.

The committee asked the East Coast Railway authorities to ensure utilisation of budgetary allocation made for the railway corridors across the state. The revenue divisional commissioner (north) was asked to monitor and provide all support for implementation of the Jharsuguda-Barpalli-Sardega railway project, which would play an important role in evacuation of huge volumes of coal.

The committee also asked the National Highways Authority of India to focus on compliance with timely forest clearance to the Cuttack-Angul-Sambalpur tollway project and Biramitrapur-Barkote and Panikoili-Rimoli Highway projects.

It was decided that steps would be taken to get power supply, forest diversion clearance and tree-cutting permissions for three pipeline projects of Indian Oil Corporation Limited.

Operation in the Daitari mines of the Odisha Mining Corporation would start shortly as it has received the stage-II forest clearance. It would enable iron ore linkage to some of the steel plants in the state.

The projects of Visa Steel, Jindal Stainless, Jindal Steel & Power, Essar Steel, Bhushan Steel, Monnet Ispat and SMC Power Generation were also discussed.