An uneasy calm prevails in the Posco region with the State Government temporarily suspending land acquisition for the steel project and the leader of the Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti(PPSS) Abhay Sahu ending his fast-unto-death.
However, while the district administration maintained that the land acquisition will be resumed soon with permission from the State Government, the anti-Posco agitators maintained that a decision on the next course of action will be taken after the next step by the State Government.
Leaders of seven political parties including the Congress, CPI, CPM, Samajwadi Party, RJD, Forward Block and the SUCI went to the Posco site on Sunday and persuaded Abhay Sahu to end his fast as the State Government has temporarily stopped the land acquisition process.
The CPI state secretary Dibakar Nayak and the Samajwadi party state unit president Rabi Behera said that both the demands of PPSS have been met by the State Government, though temporarily. They said that, though security forces have been deployed in Govindpur village, police deployed for land acquisition have been withdrawn.
Meanwhile, the State Government is planning to hand over 1554 acres of land to Posco-India for setting up its proposed mega steel project. Official sources said that Posco has already been handed over 546 acres of land and
another 1554 acres will be handed over to the company soon. The government expects that with the handing over of the land, the company would expedite its corporate social responsibility(CSR) activities in the villages around the proposed plant site.
Posco requires 2,700 acres of land for its 8 mtpa capacity steel facility near Paradip for stage-1 of the project. Of the immediate requirement of 2,700 acres of land, the state owned Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation(IDCO) has already acquired 2100 acres of land. Out of the rest 600 acres, 300 acres have been acquired in the recent process.