Posco’s fate still uncertain as PM leaves for Korea

The fate of the Rs50,000 crore integrated steel plant by South Korea's Posco in Orissa will be decided only after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh returns from the G20 summit to Korea as an environment ministry expert panel has deferred its decision on it by 10 days.

With the environment and forests ministry's various independent committees still reviewing the Meena Gupta committee report, the prime minister will not be able to carry a definitive view of the government to his Korean counterpart.

With the dispute continuing in the forest advisory committee (FAC) 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 (EAC) deferring the review of the Gupta report on environment clearance of the steel giant by 10 days, the final call by minister of state for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh would not be taken anytime soon.

With the three review 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. However, Gupta (who was senior secretary in the environment ministry when the project was cleared) differed with the majority, saying a go-ahead could be given to Posco.

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.