The
Government has asked the Meena Gupta panel to submit its report on
POSCO’s steel plant in Orissa by the end of September, Union Environment
Minister Jairam Ramesh said on Tuesday.
He also added that it is unfair to
compare Vedanta’s Niyamgiri bauxite mining project with POSCO’s Rs540bn
integrated steel plant.
According to the minister, no tribal
rights issue is involved in the POSCO project. “The POSCO project
involves issues of other forest dwellers and environmental clearance,”
Ramesh said.
The South Korean steelmaker’s plans of
setting up a 12 million tons integrated plant at Jagatsinghpur have
been delayed since 2005 because of stiff opposition from local farmers.
The world’s third-largest steelmaker
signed a MOU in June 2005. The plant was to be built in three phases by
2016, with production scheduled to begin by the end of 2011.