Rahul offers conditional support to Posco project

All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Rahul Gandhi said on Wednesday he would back the Posco project if the Korean steel maker provided proper rehabilitation.

“The project will bring development. We are not against development. If Posco provides proper rehabilitation, we will be with Posco. If it fails, we will be with the agitating people,” he said while addressing a gathering of tribals at Jharsuguda in Orissa.

Billed as India’s biggest foreign direct investment, the $12-billion project was to have come on stream in 2011, but the Orissa government started acquiring land only in June. Posco, the world’s third-biggest steel company, needs 4,000 acres for the mill, which will initially produce 4 million tonnes of steel a year. For the past six years, the project has been bogged by protests and environmental concerns. Green clearance from the environment ministry only came in January.

Both pro-Posco and anti-Posco brigades had requested Gandhi to visit the Posco site during his two-day tour. However, it is not in his itinerary. Gandhi also expressed sympathy with tribals displaced by coal mining projects in Jharsuguda.

On the first day of his tour, Gandhi also addressed tribals at Baripada in Mayurbhanj and Kotapada in Koraput. At Kotapada, he urged tribal youths to join active politics. “More tribal people should join active politics, through which they will be able to solve the problems they have been facing for ages,” Gandhi said.

Senior Congress leaders and even media persons were not allowed at the gathering in Kotapada. Gandhi is scheduled to visit Bhadrak and address a public meeting in Bhubaneswar tomorrow.