Steel company ArcelorMittal is close to pulling out of a $20 billion plan to build two steel plants in India due to difficulties buying land, its chairman and main owner, Lakshmi Mittal, told ‘The Financial Times’.

Delays in persuading farmers and others to sell land for the development in the states of Jharkand and Orissa were holding up the project, Mittal said in an interview with the FT.

"If we cannot make progress in these two sites we will have to abandon the idea of starting the projects there and look for other places in India for our expansion," the FT reported Mittal as saying.

Mittal is seeking to boost world No.1 steelmaker ArcelorMittal's slim presence in the country of his birth.

Mittal told the FT he was still committed to building at least one steel plant in India, but that dropping his plan for two plants producing together 24 million tonnes of steel a year by about 2015 would delay his plans for a sizeable presence in India by several years.