BHUBANESWAR: Land acquisition hurdles continue to plague key infrastructure and industrial projects in Odisha with central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) now voicing concerns.
The IREL (India) Ltd (formerly Indian Rare Earths Ltd) has flagged serious issues over forest land diversion delaying its joint venture mining project in Krushnaprasad area in Puri district.
The central PSU under the Department of Atomic Energy, in partnership with the Odisha government’s Industrial Development Corporation (now merged with Odisha Mining Corporation), had formed IREL-IDCOL, a joint venture company for the extraction of strategic and atomic minerals from the Krushnaprasad heavy mineral deposit.
Sources said the project, which received a letter of intent (LoI) from the Steel and Mines department on June 17, 2022, aimed at extracting Monazite, Zircon, Ilmenite, Rutile, Sillimanite, and Garnet, minerals vital to India’s strategic interests, especially Monazite, which contains Thorium and rare earth elements.
However, the project has run into hurdles due to forest classification issues in the proposed mining area. Of the 852.45 hectares (ha) identified in the LoI, around 581 ha were later determined to be forest land, much of it under the Pitisal proposed reserve forest.
Initially, Chilika DFO permitted a differential GPS (DGPS) survey over 540 ha of forest land but following a survey, Krushnaprasad tehsildar authenticated the presence of 580.8 ha of forest land within the lease area. Subsequently, the joint venture company submitted applications for environmental and forest clearances last year.
While the forest diversion proposal was cleared by the project screening committee on October 7, 2024, complications arose during subsequent site inspections.
The regional chief conservator of forests (RCCF), Bhubaneswar, during inspection, pointed out discrepancies related to presence of district level committee (DLC) land within the lease area following which DFO of Chilika wildlife division returned the proposal citing these issues and necessitating a fresh verification of records.
As per the DLC records, it was found that an additional 41 ha fall under DLC classification, revising the total forest land component in the lease area to around 610.8 ha. This has triggered fresh requirements for compensatory afforestation on either 41 ha of non-forest land or around 100 ha of degraded forest land, adding to procedural delays.
Meanwhile, IREL has urged the state government to freeze the forest land identified and expedite the allotment of degraded forest land for compensatory purposes. “This will help fast track the project which is of strategic importance to the nation. The land schedule has been revised multiple times, adversely impacting the progress of the project,” the company pointed out in a letter to the Industries department.