Panel to report on Posco by September-end: Ramesh
25 Aug 2010
The government has asked the Meena Gupta panel to submit its report on Posco's steel plant in Orissa by the end of September, minister of state for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh said on Tuesday.
He also added that it is unfair to compare Vedanta's Niyamgiri bauxite mining project with Posco's Rs540-billion 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 told newspersons in New Delhi.
The South Korean steelmaker's plans of setting up a 12-million tonne 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.
