Essar Steel told to pay uniform land rate

The district administration of Jagatsinghpur has advised the Essar Steel Orissa Limited to provide a uniform rate for land acquisition for its proposed steel project at Paradip.

Essar Steel proposes to set up a six million tonne per annum integrated steel plant at Paradip at an investment of Rs 10,721 core . The company has identified 1925 acres of land for the steel project out of which 1663 acres are private and the rest 262 acres are government land.

The administration suggested that Essar needs to offer a price to the land loser which is comparable to that provided by the Indian Farmer Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (Iffco). Iffco is going for expansion of its fertilizer unit at Paradeep in the same district.

Essar Steel's land acquisition process has been unable to make any headway for the past two to three years as the rate of private land could not be finalized. The discussions between the district administration and land losers had also fallen through as Essar Steel did not agree to hike the price of private land.

The district administration had convened a meeting on Monday between the land losers and the Essar Steel officials to settle the rate of private land that needed to be acquired for the company's steel project. The meet was attended by the representatives of five land losers' associations. The land losers among other things demanded Rs 25 lakh per acre, employment opportunity to the affected families and proper implementation of Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Policy of 2006 of the Orissa government.

Essar Steel had agreed to accept the demand of land losers’ association on January 31 this year with a condition that each land loser should produce a written declaration that they would not demand more than Rs 25 lakh per acre of land in the future”, said Sanjay Swain, president, Milit Kriyanustan Committee.

More than 750 land losers have already submitted their declaration before the district collector but company has violated the terms of agreement by purchasing the land at the cost of Rs 8 lakh per acre, he alleged. “Both Essar Steel and Iffco have acquired the land from Bijyachandpur village for their projects. While Iffco has given Rs 20-22 lakh per acre to the land losers, Essar Steel was buying land at only Rs 8 lakh per acre”, Swain said.

592 families from Nuagarh, Paradipgarh, Udayabata, Bijyachandpur, Pipala, Baldia, Chakradharpur have been identified as displaced families.