The Meena Gupta Committee has started its visit at Posco-India?s proposed site in Orissa?s Jagatsinghpur district from Friday. The Union ministry of environment and forest (MoEF)-appointed central team, which will probe into allegations of the Forest Right Act violation in the proposed site, will tour the area for two days.
The four member committee comprising Meena Gupta, former secretary, MoEF, Urmila Pingle, Hyderabad-based tribal expert, Devendra Pandey, former director of Forest Survey of India, Dehradun, and V Suresh, advocate, Madras high court, on Friday met the people in Bali Dhipa village under the Dhinkia gram panchayat, known to be the most militant in the movement against the Posco steel project.
Meena Gupta said that committee will cover all three gram panchayats?Gada Kujanga, Dhinkia and Nuagoan?during the next two days and ascertain the facts about the implementation of the Forest Right Act and the rehabilitation and resettlement of the affected people.
The committee members arrived here on Thursday and travelled to Jagatsinghpur to talk to the district administration on the issue of Forest Right Act and rehabilitation. The team is expected to submit its report with in a month.
Meena Gupta?s is the second committee after Ashish Kothari committee which is probing into the allegation of non-implementation of FRA at the Posco site.
Meanwhile, the Posco Pratirodha Sangram Samiti (PPSS), the organisation which is spearheading the agitation against the plant, has demanded that the MoEF should immediately cancel the forest clearance accorded to Posco acting on the Kothari committee report which has clearly stated that the FRA has not been implemented in the area. The PPSS chairman, Abhaya Sahoo, said that the Meena Gupta committee is only a delay tactic by the MoEF.
In view of the fact that the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union minister for environment and forest, Jairam Ramesh, assured the Orissa chief minister that the Posco project would be expedited, it is strongly believed that the MoEF is likely to take a favourable decision with regard to Posco. The MoEF has directed the state government to stop work at the proposed Posco site following the report of the Ashish Kothari report.