JSW Steel will ‘push’ through its 10-million-tonne steel plant at Salboni, located just 15 km from Lalgarh in West Bengal — the centre of Maoist insurgency.
Sajjan Jindal, vice-chairman and managing director of JSW Steel, said: “It’s scary and very upsetting. There will be negative people … We have thousands and lakhs of shareholders, but we have to push this project through.”
The first audacious attack came on the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the steel project on November 2, 2008, when Maoists planted landmines on the route taken by West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the then Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and Jindal himself. As it turned out, the attack was aimed at Bhattacharjee.
Jindal said: “We are aware that it is not an easy part of the country.”
JSW is in possession of the entire land, around 4,800 acres. About 90 per cent of the land was vested with the government.
