Thaindian News

Bhubaneswar, June 27 (IANS) Hundreds of protesting villagers Monday forced authorities to halt construction of a boundary wall at a project site of South Korean major Posco, which is building a steel-port-power complex in Orissa, officials said.

The construction work of a boundary wall at Polang village in Jagatsinghpur district had started last week on land the administration had already acquired for the project.

Hundreds of people, who support the project, rushed to the site and prevented officials from continuing work, saying the government has to meet their demands first.

Tamil Pradhan, a pro-Posco leader, said his group had asked the government to meet six demands on their charter, including the involvement of local people in the construction work.

The work at the site was being carried out by those who do not belong to the area, he said.

“The work has been stopped temporarily. We are speaking to them,” Additional District Magistrate S.K. Choudhuri told IANS.

He said the work of cutting trees and levelling the land in other parts of the acquired site was unaffected.

The administration Monday also re-deployed hundreds of policemen near Govindpur where thousands of villagers have formed a human barricade for the past two weeks to prevent the entry of officials into areas that were yet to be acquired.

Although villagers fear the move is aimed at quelling their protest, Choudhuri said the policemen have been deployed to maintain law and order because some land has been acquired in the past near the protest site.

Orissa had signed a pact with the South Korean steel major in 2005 for the $12 billion steel-port-power complex near port town of Paradip, about 120 km from here, the largest foreign investment in India.

At least 2,900 acres of the total land required for the project is forest land. Authorities said villagers have encroached upon large patch of the forest land illegally and they need to be vacated.

Protesters said they have been holding the lands for generations and once the land is acquired, they will lose their agro-based sustainable livelihood.

The government, which halted land acquisition June 14 at troubled area after protest, said it is now focusing on the area already acquired.