Tata Steel project displaced reject revised R&R offer

The displaced and land losers for the Tata Steel's Gopalpur project in Ganjam district have rejected the fresh modified compensation package and sought higher compensation from the company. The representatives of the affected villagers demanded the higher compensation at a tri-partite meeting held at Chhatrapur, the district headquarter of Ganjam, on Saturday to discuss the new package.

State's higher education minister, Pradeep Kumar Panigrahi, who represents Gopalpur constituency in the assembly, district collector PC Chaudhary and officials of the Tata Steel were present in the meeting.

While the land losers demanded compensation at the rate of Rs 10 lakh per acres, the displaced families wanted the one-time payment offered for skipping claim for job to Rs 10-lakh and calculation of the extended families with 2014 as the cut-off year.

"The market value of the land in the area at present is around Rs 50 to Rs 60 lakh per acre. Why Tata Steel is reluctant to provide higher compensation demanded by the affected people", asked former MLA (Chhatrapur), N.Narayan Reddy. He also demanded treatment of all categories of families, the displaced and land losers, on the same footing.

In the new compensation package, the company had proposed to provide additional Rs 2 lakh per acre to the land losers, while offering Rs 5 lakh to the displaced families in lieu of job. The company had provided Rs one lakh per acre at the time of land acquisition about 18 years ago. The company had also agreed to double the number of extended families without fixing any cut-off date. Presently, there are 656 core and 989 extended families of five villages displaced in 1996, when the steel giant acquired 2970 acres of land. The company also wanted to relax the age limit for the job from 35 to 45 years.

"The company would spend additional Rs 300 plus crore for the implementation of the new compensation package", said a senior company officer. "It's not possible to provide the compensation as per the people's demand", he added. "We will send the suggestions of the people to the government for consideration", said collector. "We hope the government will consider the proposal of the people sympathetically", the minister added.

While the villagers of Sindhigaon, Badapaur, Patrapur, Kalipalli and Paikapada had got displaced for the Tata Steel project, families of other eight villages lost their land.

Tata Steel had acquired the land to set up a 10 million tonne steel plant, but later shelved the project citing delay in land acquisition as the reason. The company had later decided to set up an industrial park and multi-product SEZ. The company is now setting up of 55,000 tonne per annum capacity ferro chrome plant, as an anchor investor for the industrial park project with an investment of around Rs 400-crore.