Posco clearance under PMO pressure: Anti-Posco agitators

The ministry of environment and forest (MoEF) headed by Jairam Ramesh had cleared the Posco project under pressure from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) or Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik, anti-Posco agitators alleged today.

"We suspect the PMO because it had been monitoring progress of Posco project from day one. PMO's interest in the Posco project is not unknown to anyone," Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS) president Abhay Sahu told PTI.

It was also to be kept in mind that Ramesh accorded forest clearance to Posco project on May 2, barely two days after meeting Patnaik here, he said.

And four days after that, Sahu said, Ramesh had candidly confessed that he had been forced to regularise things illegally many times.

"Unfortunately many times I am forced to regularise. Because I have no option because one refinery has been built... steel plant is built. So I am guilty in some cases of having actually condone many environmental violations.... In some occasions I had to compromise," Ramesh had said on May 6 at a conference organised by the All India Management Association in New Delhi.

"Is an union minister authorised by law to regularise illegality," the PPSS chief asked and demanded that projects which were accorded environmental and forest clearance by bending rules be named.

"The people of this country have every right to know which are the projects cleared by the ministry of environment and forest by regularising illegality. We are sure Posco is one among them," he said.

PPSS, which had already submitted documents claiming genuine traditional forest dwellers were living in the Posco's proposed plant site villages, also questioned the requirement of sending central panels headed by NC Saxena and and Meena Gupta to verify implementation of Forest Rights Act, 2006.

"If Ramesh, as he said in the order sheet, had faith and trust in what the state government said on implementation of the FRA, why did he spend public money by sending two committees here from Delhi," Sahu asked.

Both Saxena and Gupta panels had said FRA was violated at the proposed plant site villages, Sahu said adding the MoEF refused to accept the recommendations of its own committees.

Laws like Environment Protection Act, 1986, Forest (conservation) Act, 1980, Forest Rights Act, 2006 and CRZ Rule, 2011 were violated for Posco project, he alleged.