Denuded forest in the proposed Posco plant area. Telegraph picture

Paradip, Aug. 10: The authorities today tasted partial success in resuming the stalled forest clearance work in some pockets of the proposed Posco project area with the villagers’ cooperation.

As the steel project had been stuck in protest for more than a week, the administration changed its strategy involving the people in the work. For a change, a local village forest committee was entrusted with the responsibility to cut down the trees in Nuagaon forest areas. While the officials stayed away, the “willing” local villagers carried out the forest clearance work.

With people’s insistence on revision of the relief package, the administration suspended the project work for the past 10 days. The works such as, boundary wall-building, forest clearance, sand-filling at the earmarked rehabilitation colony and ground-levelling, came to a halt as the protesters had sought for fulfilment of six-point demands prior to the work.

“The administration held talks with a section of the villagers. They were convinced that their pending demands would be duly considered at the Rehabilitation and Peripheral Development Advisory Committee meeting, scheduled on August 24. Later, the villagers had expressed willingness to cooperate with the administration for work resumption,” said Kujang tehsildar Vasudev Pradhan.

“Today, they went into the Nuagaon forest areas and pulled down about 1,000 forest-classified trees. The officials did not accompany the villagers’ team. They cut down the trees by sawing machines provided to them by the state-run Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation. We are happy that the standoff has been put to an end following people’s cooperation,” said Pradhan.

Moreover, the ancillary project works progressed in the Polang-Noliasahi areas under Gadakujang gram panchayat with the landlosers being paid a relief of Rs 18 lakh for their fruit-bearing trees.People today turned up in large numbers to receive the relief cheques against the felled fruit-bearing trees at Polang and Nolia Sahi villages, said special land acquisition officer Nrusingha Charan Swain.