The Orissa government on Wednesday assured the Centre that there was no tribal inhabitant or any other traditional forest dwellers (OTFDs) living at the proposed plant site villages near Paradip. "We have submitted the assurance report to the union ministry of environment and forest. The state government maintained its earlier stand that there was no tribal or any other traditional forest dwellers living at the proposed plant site villages," Chief Secretary, B K Patnaik said.
While according conditional environmental clearance to Posco's steel plant and captive port projects on January 31, Union Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh had sought a categorical assurance report from the state government that the provisions of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006 were not violated in the proposed plant site villages.
Though the company's proposed 12mtpa mega steel project got the environmental clearance, it required the forest diversion clearance from the ministry as 2,900 acres of the total requirement of 4,004 acres of land were categorised as forest land.
The ministry wanted to be assured that the FRA was not violated because two of its committees-N C Saxena Committee and Meena Gupta Committee had pointed out gross violation of FRA at the proposed plant site areas.
