Villagers to Re-Occupy Land Acquired for Posco Project

More join protest against Posco land aquisition. </p> </body></html>
More join protest against Posco land aquisition. (Photo appeared first in 2011 article under the citation of The Hindu.)

More join protest against Posco land aqui­si­tion. (Pho­to appeared first in 2011 arti­cle under the cita­tion of The Hin­du.

Octo­ber 1st, 2014

Posco Pratirodh San­gram Sami­ti (PPSS), which is spear­head­ing move­ment against acqui­si­tion of land for mega steel project by South Kore­an steel major POSCO in Odisha’s Jagats­ingh­pur dis­trict, said that vil­lagers would re-occu­py land acquired for the project.

“Land has been acquired for the steel project in pen and paper and some patch­es by use of force. But, vil­lagers are deter­mined to re-occu­py land which had been enjoyed by them gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion,” said Prashant Paikray, spokesper­son of PPSS, on Mon­day.

Mr. Paikray said as many as 32 cas­es had been reg­is­tered in local police sta­tion on charges of re-occu­py­ing the ‘acquired’ land.

“We are back­ing peo­ple to take pos­ses­sion of the land which was claimed to be acquired by the State gov­ern­ment for the com­pa­ny. Many vil­lagers have start­ed to con­struct betel vine yards,” he said.

Mean­while, vil­lagers of Dhinkia passed unan­i­mous res­o­lu­tion in their Pal­li Sab­ha not to divert their for­est land for non-for­est pur­pose.

“We will try to con­vince vil­lagers of all near­by habi­ta­tions to pass sim­i­lar res­o­lu­tion in the forth­com­ing Gram Sab­ha sched­uled to be held next month,” he said.

The PPSS appre­hend­ed that the State gov­ern­ment being backed by Naren­dra Modi gov­ern­ment, which is wide­ly seen as pro-cor­po­rate regime, would give a fur­ther push to the project that is yet to take off due to resis­tance by local peo­ple.

The orga­ni­za­tion is re-organ­is­ing peo­ple to put up bar­ri­cades at vil­lage entrance for pro­hibit­ing entry of State admin­is­tra­tion. The South Kore­an steel major had signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with Odisha gov­ern­ment in 2005 to set up 12 mil­lion tonne per annum capac­i­ty steel plant in Jagats­ingh­pur dis­trict. But dur­ing past nine years, the project has not moved beyond the process of land acqui­si­tion.

Recent­ly, the State gov­ern­ment had announced com­ple­tion of acqui­si­tion of 2,700 acres of land for the first phase of steel project. But the admin­is­tra­tion had not been able to get phys­i­cal pos­ses­sion over the land. Even, bound­ary wall around the acquired land could not be erect­ed.