Orissa to speed up land acquisition for ArcelorMittal

After successfully initiating the land acquisition work for the Rs 54,000-crore Posco project, the Orissa government has now shown its readiness to start the same process for another big ticket investor- ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steel maker that has proposed to set up a 12 million tonne per annum (mtpa) steel plant in the state at a cost of around Rs 40,000 crore.

"A few days back, the steel & mines department had taken a review meeting where the representatives of ArcelorMittal were present. For ArcelorMittal, the gram sabha has already been conducted in seven out of 15 project affected villages under Patana tehsil in Keonjhar district. Our department has issued directions to the Keonjhar district collector to expedite the process of conducting gram sabhas in the remaining villages”, minister for industries and steel & mines, Raghunath Mohanty told mediapersons here.

The minister exuded confidence that ArcelorMittal would definitely set up the project in Orissa. The state government has already accorded administrative approval for acquisition of 4905.19 acres of private land for it.

The state water resources department has allotted 140 cusecs of water for this steel project.

ArclelorMittal, the world's largest steel maker had entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the state government on December 21, 2006. The mega project involved an investment of around Rs 40,000 crore. As per the MoU, the project needed around 8000 acres of land.

The state government owned Industrial Promotion and Investment Corporation of Orissa Ltd (Ipicol) had approved 7002.72 acres of land for it and an additional 750.58 acres for the plant township.

Out of the approved land size, government land is 2583.53 acres with the balance 4419.18 acres being private land. The villages where land is to be acquired for the steel plant are Chilida, Angikala, Chemana, Nuagaonbalabhadrapur, Raikala, Dharuapada, Kimirdapasi, Bhringaraj, Birudipusi, Padmakesharpur, Kodakhemana, Bradaungua, Jamunapasi and Padmapur.