A high level team visits POSCO site for assessment

Kendrapara, Jul 22 (UNI) A high-level team comprising officials from the union forest and environment and Orissa forest department have visited the site proposed for mega steel plant to be set up by South Korea steel major POSCO to make an assessment yesterday.

The visit of the central team assumed significance in view of both state forest and revenue departments claiming their rights over the land located in Nuagaon, Gadakujanga and Dhinkia Panchayats of Kujanga block.

Forest official sources said they were against the revenue department's decision of handing over 842.96 acres of forest land, 77.89 acres of gochar land and 2289.26 acres of lease lands to POSCO.

According to a senior forest officer of Rajnagar mangrove forest division, of 4004 acres of land, to be acquired in three gram panchayats for 12 million steel plant with an investment of Rs 51,000 crores, nearly 3600 acres were forest land as per the forest settlement map of 1961.

As per the guidelines of Centre, the state government had to go for afforestration in equal area of land to convert the forest land into revenue land.

The officials, who visited Gadakujanga to inspect the land identified by the state government for setting up of POSCO project, included Central Forest Conservator Khajam Singh, State Chief Forest conservator Siddharth Das among other senior officials.

UNI