Posco steel project faces fresh protests

Mumbai: Protests erupted again against a steel plant being set up by South Korean steel maker Pohang Iron and Steel Co (Posco), raising fears that the $12 billion greenfield project in Orissa may be delayed further.

Hundreds of protesters, mostly students, staged a protest march, waving flags and placards demanding the release of at least three anti-Posco leaders arrested in the state earlier this month.

The Supreme Court had ruled in August that Posco can use large tracts of forest land to build the plant, even as villagers claim the construction will force them out of their farmland and displace a total of about 20,000 people.

Posco and the state government claim the plant, in the Jagatsinghpur district of the mineral-rich state, will create jobs, but farmers are unwilling to part with their land, which is the main source of income.

The protesters carrying banners and posters demonstrated at Dhinkia in the coastal Jagatsinghpur district, about 100 km from Bhubaneswar. Protesters waving red flags also  squatted on a road near the police headquarters in Cuttack city, close to the state capital, police said.

Posco signed a deal with the Orissa government in June 2005 to build a steel plant in Jagatsinghpur by 2016. The project has been delayed by months of protests with thousands of villagers claiming it would deprive them of their homes and livelihoods.

The steelmaker and government, however, claim the plant would affect only 500 families while creating thousands of jobs in the plant and ancillary industries.