HC refuses to stay forest land acquisition

The PILs came soon after the Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO) started acquiring government lands which were encroached upon by farmers by paying a specially announced compensation of Rs 11.5 lakh/acre for the loss of betel vines,most of which are on the government land.

Though a division bench of Chief Justice V Gopala Gowda and Justice B N Mahapatra in their interim order admitted that the provisions of FRA Act has not been fulfilled as per law,they said that staying land acquisition in forest land area would not be in public interest for a big ticket FDI project like this.

But the bench stayed land acquisition notification under Section 6(1) of LA Act for private land in the project area ordering that status quo be maintained. The petitioners’ lawyer and senior advocate Jayant Das said they would move another petition before the court to seek a stay on tree-felling by Posco in the acquired land till the case is finally disposed of.

Posco India’s deputy general manager SN Singh said with the latest order,all legal hurdles for the project has been cleared. “Though civil work was stopped for the last few days,we would resume. The stay on private land acquisition would not be a big problem for us. Already we have acquired 15-20 acres of private lands,” he said.

Anti-Posco group Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti said they were disappointed with the court order.

Land acquisition

* Posco needs 3,719.22 acre of land for its 12 million tonne steel plant and has so far acquired over 2000 acre,all government land.

* Of the 3,719.22 acre,the area under forest land is 3,096.77 acre,the forest diversion clearance for which was given a few months ago by the Forest and Environment Ministry.

* Despite the clearance,the state government has not been able to get into the all-important villages of Dhinkia and Govindpur under Dhinkia gram panchayat.