'Posco has received 1,700 acres from Odisha's IDCO so far'

State-owned Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation of Odisha has so far handed over about 1,700 acres to Posco-India for the 8 mtpa greenfield mega steel plant in Jagatsinghpur district, sources said on Friday.

“IDCO has so far handed over about 1,700 acres to Posco-India,” a senior executive of Posco-India told PTI.

The executive, however, said he was unsure about its physical possession by the company.

IDCO was engaged by the state government to acquire land for Posco-India which was to set up a 12 mtpa steel plant near Paradip at an investment of Rs 52,000 crore.

Though Posco required 4,004 acres, it scaled the requirement down to 2,700 acre later.

An IDCO official said that of the 1700 acres, 400 acres was non-forest land and 1,300 acres was de-reserved forest land.

Earlier, the state government had handed over only 546 acres to the steel major.

Company sources said Posco would start ground work after getting another 1,000 acres.

With the pull-out of police forces from the proposed Posco steel plant site in Jagatsinghpur district, the situation on February 12 reportedly returned to normal in the area where tension had prevailed due to protest by anti-project activists.