Pro-Posco group wants demands met by May 15

Though the Orissa government is set to resume land acquisition for Posco at villages near Paradip from May 18, people supporting the project refusing to co-operate unless their demands were met by May 15.

United Action Committee said this to Ersama-Balikuda MLA Prashant Muduli to finalise the matter by May 15 or face non-cooperation from the villagers.

"We will not cooperate with land acquisition unless our demands are fulfilled," UAC president Anadi Charan Rout said today.

The state government, he said, should have consulted people before taking a decision, he said.

"We support the project. That does not mean people will accept whatever the government and the company decide," said Rout.

Demanding at least one job in the Posco project for each displaced family, the UAC sought revision of the price of homestead land. The state government and Posco had fixed Rs 17 lakh per acre of agricultural land.

"While land losers in Paradip for Essar Steels are getting Rs 19.10 lakh per acre, the state government has decided to give Rs 17 lakh per acre to land losers of the Posco project. How can the value of agricultural land and homestead land be the same?" he asked.

He demanded increase in the price for both homestead and agricultural land and also increase in compensation for labourers working in betel vines.

Earlier it was decided at the Rehabilitation and Peripheral Development Advisory Committee meeting that labourers working in betel vines would get 20 per cent of the cost of the value of the betel gardens.

"We demand increase of 30 per cent," Rout said, adding local youths should be employed instead of outsiders.

Rout, who is a close relative of senior BJD MLA Damador Rout who was recently dropped from the Naveen Patnaik cabinet, said: "Though we are unhappy over the development, it has nothing to do with the Posco project."
Land acquisition was halted on August 6, 2010 following an order by Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF).

It subsequently accorded forest land diversion clearance for the project on May 2.

The project requires 4,004 acre of which 2,900 acre has been identified as forest land.

Meanwhile, Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), the CPI-backed fishermen''s body, also said it would oppose the acquisition of land for Posco.