A ten years struggle defending the land against a steel plant project by South Korean POSCO company paid off. On 8 April 2016 the company announced the end of the project for its long environmental litigation in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and for the people's opposition.

Eleven years before (22 May 2005), the South Korean Pohang Steel Company (POSCO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Odisha. The state authorities had committed that it would facilitate various approvals for setting up a steel plant, a captive power plant, a port and many other activities for the company. It had also assured the company that it would keep the area free of encumbrances. However, POSCO’s projects have met with stiff on-the-ground resistance, legal tussles related to environmental approvals and grant of leases. Issues around land acquisition, forest rights, impact assessment, violence, compensations, conditions of rehabilitation areas were of great concern. Attempts by the government to seize or buy peasants' land for the POSCO project, provoked protests from local residents and led to increasingly bitter clashes with the police. Activists were arrested. Some people were killed in clashes with contractors. Finally the government acquired 2,700 acres between 2012 and early 2015. A Black Day on June 22 2015 was organized by the anti-POSCO people’s movement’ (or PPSS). It marked the tenth anniversary of the signature of the MOU. The struggle continued not only asking for the withdrawal of the project, which was frozen so far, but also the annulment of the charges against more than 200 villagers. The cultivation of betel vines by the local population allows them to survive and also defend the land from POSCO and governmental appropriation.

The project construction was halted since 2006 but in 2012 it seemed it might start again. However, in a jolt to South Korean steel giant, a UN Human Rights panel on 1st October 2013 asked it to immediately halt the mega steel-to-port plant project alleging possible displacement of thousands of people and disruption in their livelihoods. The project threatened to displace over 22,000 people in the Jagatsinghpur District, and disrupt the livelihoods of many thousands more in the surrounding area. Protests against land acquisition for POSCO plant, coupled with regulatory hurdles kept still the proposed plant, billed as the the largest FDI in India.  The enormous plant envisaged 12 million tons of steel upon reaching full capacity. The company would also construct a new port at Jatadhari. The budget was Rs 50,000 crore, equivalent to 10 billion USD.Ten years ago (22 May 2005), the South Korean Pohang Steel Company (POSCO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Odisha. The state authorities had committed that it would facilitate various approvals for setting up a steel plant, a captive power plant, a port and many other activities for the company. It had also assured the company that it would keep the area free of encumbrances. However, POSCO’s projects have met with stiff on-the-ground resistance, legal tussles related to environmental approvals and grant of leases. A multiple administrative review committees were also set up to assess the project’s impacts. It is now a publicly known fact that the project has been closely monitored by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Issues around land acquisition, forest rights, impact assessment, violence, compensations, conditions in rehabilitation areas are of great concern. Attempts by the Government to seize or buy peasants' land for the POSCO project, provoked protests from local residents and led to increasingly bitter clashes with the Police. Activists have been arrested. Some people have been killed in clashes with contractors. And finally the government acquired 2,700 acres between 2012 and early 2015. The Black Day on June 22 2015 was organized by the anti-POSCO people’s movement’ (or PPSS). It marked the tenth anniversary of the signature of the MOU. The struggle continued not only asking for the withdrawal of the project, which has been frozen so far, but also the annulment of the charges against more than 200 villagers. The cultivation of betel vines by the local population allows them to survive and also defend the land from POSCO and governmental appropriation.

 UPDATE 8th April 2016: Posco announced the scrap of the project during a National Green Tribunal hearing this Friday 8th April, for the many problems in getting subsequent environment and forest clearances, as well as for the protests from locals and different political parties over displacement, water and captive port issues

As reported in the Business Standard, 9 April 2016 (1), "Korean steel major Posco told the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that it would not pursue any more its Rs 50,000-crore integrated steel plant project in Odisha. In a case where Posco was defending the revised environmental clearance it had received in 2014, the court recorded the Korean giant as stating the “environmental clearance is valid only up to July 19, 2017, and they would not be able to do any work because the land has not been handed over to them and therefore the project cannot proceed any further”... Posco asked the tribunal to cancel its clearance. Instead, the court ordered: “At this stage they (Posco) are unable to carry out the project and if they plan to take advantage of the environment clearance and complete the project, they would inform the applicant and the tribunal.” This effectively brings the curtain down on the company’s beleaguered project, stuck in environmental litigation from the start

The project got its first ecology clearance in 2007 and the statutory forest clearance in 2010. In 2011, then Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh set up a committee to examine the validity of the clearance to what was then touted as the biggest foreign investment in the country. Ramesh cleared the project yet again but with additional conditions. This got challenged in the NGT. The green court suspended the clearance, setting up yet another committee to examine the matter. Based on this panel’s report, the ministry gave another clearance to the project in 2014. This fresh clearance was challenged again, for having allegedly violated the terms the court had imposed while asking for the re-examination.

Meanwhile, the company was charged with cutting down trees on the site without having got a formal letter from the state government affirming its forest clearance. It was given a stop-work order in this instance. Oddly, the formal letter from Odisha, a formality in the forest clearance process, never came. The case also lingered at the NGT.

Now, to the surprise of petitioner Prafulla Samantray and his lawyers, Ritwick Dutta and Rahul Choudhary, the company asked for its environmental clearance to be cancelled, saying it would not be able to complete the project by the deadline of the environmental clearance in 2017 – which it could have sought to extend as a routine event." (1)