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| Leaders of five parties address a gathering at the Posco land acquisition site at Gobindapur village on Saturday. Telegraph picture |
Bhubaneswar/Paradip, June 12: Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh today warned the Orissa government against using the clearances granted to the proposed 12-million-tonne Posco steel plant as “a licence for forcible land acquisition”.
“I have often said that the environment and forest clearance process should not be used to fight other battles that have to do with important issues such as land acquisition, compensation and livelihood. The Posco project in Orissa was given environment and forest clearance by the ministry of environment and forests after a great deal of thought and a careful balancing of various factors. However, I hope that the Orissa government will not use this clearance as a license for forcible acquisition of land,” the minister said in a statement e-mailed to mediapersons.
Calling upon the Orissa government to acquire land only through peaceful means, the minister said that while he had expected all parties to adhere to the democratic norms, the government should do nothing to precipitate things. “Dialogue and discussion, not coercion, is as essential to ecological security as it is to democracy,” he said.
The state Congress here also slammed the government for unleashing a reign of terror against the protesters in the project area. The party made a plea to the government to entrust the job of mining exclusive to Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC).
On the other hand, with the two Left parties taking the lead in organising protests in the project area, some senior BJD leaders felt that the party had committed a blunder by handing over the Jagatsinghpur Lok Sabha seat to the CPI.
Lashing out at the CPI MP from Jagatsinghpur, Bibhu Prasad Tarai, former minister and Paradip MLA, Damodar Rout said: “He halted the land acquisition work yesterday at Gobindapur village. It is a well-orchestrated conspiracy. The land acquisition work had to be abruptly suspended on Saturday as the MP had led a delegation of political parties and sat on dharna at the spot.”
Rout said Tarai, who had won the election riding the Naveen wave, was close to influential politicians in the BJD, but was still trying to balk the project crucial to Orissa’s development. The CPI MP dismissed the allegations asserting that the BJD’s pact with the Left parties in the last elections was a political compulsion. “I was elected by a democratic process and not because of someone’s blessings. We want relocation of the project,” said Tarai.
Interestingly, resistance notwithstanding sections of landowners from Dhinkia and Gobindapur, the trouble spots, has sought security from the administration while expressing their willingness to give away land for the project.
Police are in receipt of complaints from landowners facing threat from the anti-Posco brigade.
“We have received a series of complaints in this regard. We have assured them of security,” said S. Devidatta Singh, Jagatsinghpur superintendent of police.
He said petitions received from people showed that quite a few of them were being forced by the protesters to take part in the resistance movement. Based on the complaints, the police have registered cases.
Repressive measures by the Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samity (PPSS) had forced 52 pro-Posco families to flee Patana village in 2007. They continue to live in isolation in the Posco transit colony at Badabagapur on the edge of the project boundary.
However, PPSS president Abhaya Sahu dismissed the allegation describing it as a ploy to tarnish the outfit’s image.