No decision on Posco before PM leaves for Korea

The fate of the Rs 50,000 crore integrated steel plant by Posco in Orissa will not be decided before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh leaves for the G20 summit to Korea on Wednesday.

With the Union environment and forests ministry's various independent committees still reviewing the Meena Gupta Committee report and not slated to finish assessment in the next two weeks, the PM will not be able to carry a definitive view of the Union government to his Korean counterpart.

With the dispute continuing in the Forest Advisory Committee on the forest official's views on how to tackle infringement of the Forest Rights Act by the Orissa government in the Posco case and the Expert Appraisal Committee deferring the review of the Gupta report on environment clearance of Korean steel giant by 10 days, the final call by the Union environment and forests minister would not be viable in the next 24 hours.

Once the EAC and FAC along with the coastal regulatory authority submit their recommendations to the minister on relevant parts of the Gupta committee report, it would fall in Jairam Ramesh's lap to review the project and its impact on people and environment.

With the three bodies functionally independent of the ministry, the minister could only move once all the three reports are submitted.

The Meena Gupta committee in its majority report had pointed to grave violations of the Environment Protection Act, Forest Conservation Act and the Forest Rights Act and stated that the clearances given so far to the Korean giant were bad in law and demanded their revocation.

Before this, the N C Saxena panel too had demanded revocation of the conditional forest clearance in view of contravention of the Forest Rights Act. The government at that point had temporarily stayed the work on the project.

The FAC, which has been deliberating on the reports, has changed its views once and difference of opinion between the non-official and official members of the committee with an attempt to re-work the stance have ended in a logjam so far.

Source:TOI