Villagers protest at Gadakujang on Thursday. Telegraph picture

Paradip, Aug. 18: Ancillary project related work was disrupted at the Posco project site today as agitated villagers stopped Posco and state-run Idco personnel from entering into the areas.

Protest against carrying out project work ‘without people’s consent’ intensified today with villagers of Nuagaon throwing a spanner in the forest clearance exercise for the steel venture.

By erecting a wooden barricade to block the road route at Gadakujang, a section of villagers seeking redrawing of project boundary and award of rehabilitation and compensation package to them disrupted the project work for the third consecutive day today.

The scenario was largely the same in neighbouring Nuagaon village. Villagers, who were cooperative till last week, suddenly turned hostile today and obstructed Posco and Idco officials in their forest clearance work.

The sudden act of volte-face by Nuagaon villagers has put the administration in a quandary. Since the last fortnight, the villagers had been assisting the authorities in carrying forward the forest clearance exercise in Nuagaon forest areas.

While project-related work has come to a grinding halt for the past two weeks, forest clearance in Nuagoan was the lone saving grace for the administration.

Project-related work in Gadakujang and Nuagaon gram panchayats has come to a standstill while the administration has so far failed to make inroads into the Dhinkia gram panchayat area, widely regarded as the nerve centre of the resistance movement against the South Korean steel major.