The Divisional Forest Officer of Angul has served a show cause notice on the Jindal Steel and Power Limited (JSPL), which is setting up a 6 million tonne steel plant here, for alleged violation of Central guidelines on initiating construction activities on non-forest land.
The notice issued on October 5 asked the JSPL authorities to explain why it had violated the guidelines by starting construction work on non –forest land without obtaining forest clearance from the Centre. The notice directed the company to stop work on the non-forest land, according to the conservator of forest, Angul circle.
DFO SS Mishra said, Central guideline states that if a project site has both forest and non-forest land, no construction work can be started on the non-forest land until clearance is obtained for diversion of the forest land.
The notice is a severe set back to JSPL, which had started work on 200 acres of non-forest land with a target to commission the project in 2011. Unlike other mega projects in the state proposed by Posco, Tata Steel and ArcelorMittal, which are facing land acquisition problems, JSPL had acquired almost all of its required land and started the construction work.
JSPL required 2018 hectare of land out of which 168 hectares are forest land. The remaining are private and government land. According to forest department sources, environmental clearance for the Rs 15000 crore projects was obtained in 2007 but stage one forest clearance is yet to be available.
When contacted, a company spokesman said, “We were bound to start the work on the non-forest government land to meet the conditions of the state-owned Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO), land acquiring agency for the project.
While transferring land to us, IDCO had set condition that land should be used within two years otherwise it will revert back to the government.
Besides the company has got consent from state government on March 2007 to establish the project on the acquired land”.
