Utkal Bharat president Kharabela Swain has urged Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to oppose the move of the United Nation’s Human Rights panel to stall the mega steel project of Posco.
Describing the UN Human Rights panel’s recent suggestion to South Korean steel major Posco to immediately halt its steel project in Odisha as motivated, Swain said this is an attempt by some western forces to break the industrial progress of the country.
Swain said the panel’s apprehensions about displacement of thousands of people and disruption in their livelihoods were totally misplaced. Perhaps the UN panel is not aware of the fact that the land being acquired is Government land. The Government has not violated any human rights by evicting people who have unauthorisedly occupied its land.
Neither there are any forest lands nor any tribals staying at the proposed Posco project site. All land acquired for the project belong to the Government. Evicting encroachers from Government land is not an offence, the former MP said.
The UN panel report was prepared on the basis of recommendations of some NGOs of western countries who never wanted India to develop economically, Swain said.
He alleged that some foreign-funded NGOs are fuelling protests against Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu. The financial status of anti-Posco activists had seen a quantum jump in recent years, he alleged. Swain came down heavily on the Chief Minister for not visiting the project site even once in the last nine years. The $12 billion Posco project required 4,004 acres of land of which the State Government has already acquired 2,700 acres of land and handed over 1,700 acres to the overseas company.