Tata Steel's Kalinganagar project construction from mid-August

Tata Steel expects to resume construction work on its six million tonne per annum greenfield integrated steel plant at Kalinganagar in Orissa’s Jajpur district in the middle of August this year.

“We are in talks with the locals who would be displaced by the company’s Kalinganagar project and expect to resolve the issues pertaining to rehabilitation of the affected families by August this year.

The company expects to commence construction work soon after resolving these issues”, said HM Nerurkar, executive director (India and South-East Asia), Tata Steel Limited. Tata Steel has already displaced 80-85 per cent of the families for its Kalinganagar project, he claimed.

Nerurkar was talking to reporters on the sidelines of the 13th International Conference on Clean, Green and Sustainable Technologies in Iron and Steel Making held in the city,

The Kalinganagar project, which is being taken up at an investment of Rs 21,000 crore, involved the displacement of about 1,200 families.

The greenfield steel plant had already suffered a delay of more than three years because of the resistance of the local tribals as a result of which the cost has escalated by about Rs 6,000 crore from the original estimate of Rs 15,400 crore.The steelmaker had signed a MoU (memorandum of understanding) with the Orissa government in November 2004 for setting up the integrated steel plant.

The protest against Tata Steel’s project was spearheaded by the Visthapan Virodhi Jana Manch (VVJM).

VVJM was formed after the death of 14 people in a police firing on January 2, 2006 when the tribals clashed with the police while opposing the construction of the steel plant’s boundary wall.

It may be noted that Tata Steel had jumped several timelines in its plan to commence construction work of the Kalinganagar steel plant.

During his visit to Orissa in January this year, B Muthuraman, managing director, Tata Steel had announced that the company expected to resolve all issues pertaining to land acquisition and allotment of iron ore mines for the Kalinganagar steel plant within three months.

Tata Steel had placed orders for construction equipment worth Rs 6,000 crore for the steel plant.

The company had also started offsite steel fabrication for hot strip mills in an area leased out from the state government owned Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) near Jajpur Road to reduce the construction time for the project.