ROURKELA: Even as several development projects in Steel City are hanging fire for the last three years owing to directions issued by the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST), the Sundargarh district administration has drawn flak for failing to break the impasse.
The NCST, hearing a petition of a section of displaced persons of Rourkela Steel Plant, on June 7, 2017 had instructed the district Collector stop further construction on unutilised land acquired from tribals. On February 23, 2018, acting on a complaint filed by president of RSP and Marshalling Yard Displaced Persons’ Association Lachu Ram, the Commission instructed the principal secretary of Revenue department and the Collector to proceed with construction on land only after obtaining consent of tribals, the stakeholders.
The NCST had summoned the then chief secretary and a few other officials of the State government and SAIL to appear in its fifth sitting at New Delhi on June 20, 2017. Due to the Commission’s stance and the administration failure to deal with it, construction of a wholesale market yard of Regulated Market Committee (RMC) at `98.50 crore in Balughat, a mega housing project of Rourkela Development Authority (RDA) and few others at Panposh and Chhend Colony remain stuck.
In February this year, NCST chairman Nand Kumar Sai had handed over a special report to President Ramnath Kovind noting that a bulk of unused surplus 4,514.62 acre land surrendered by RSP to government was sold commercially. Demanding the land be returned to their original owners, the Commission wanted the report to be tabled in Parliament.
Rourkela Bar Association president and RMC sub-committee chairman Ramesh Chandra Bal criticised the administration for sitting idle on the issue, for which development projects have been stalled, affecting a large section of the city’s population including tribals.