A panel set up by India’s environment ministry recommended withholding forest clearances for a planned steel mill by South Korea’s Posco in the eastern state of Orissa.
The Forest Advisory Committee submitted its report yesterday, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said in an interview in New Delhi today.
An earlier committee formed by the ministry had recommended that the project should not be given forest clearance, citing violations of the Forest Rights Act 2006 and disruption to the lives of the local tribal population.
Posco’s project, billed as the single-biggest investment by a foreign company in India, has been delayed since 2005 because of opposition from farmers unwilling to give up their land. In August, the ministry rejected a proposal by Vedanta Resources Plc, owned by billionaire Anil Agarwal, to mine bauxite at Niyamgiri hills in the same state, hampering a planned $8 billion expansion.
The Korean steelmaker’s 12-million metric ton plant in Orissa, a power plant and a port will need 4,004 acres, of which about 74 percent is forest land, according to an environment ministry report.
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