The Orissa government is looking at legal options if the Union shipping ministry doesn’t roll back a notification extending Kolkata Port’s limits right upto the Orissa coast, even as the centre clarified on Wednesday “there will be no adverse impact from the expansion”.

The Orissa chief minister, Naveen Patnaik, met the Union shipping minister GK Vasan in Delhi on Wednesday to sort out the row. Confirming the meeting, a government release said the minister of shipping told Patnaik that the KoPT limits were extended basically for providing transloading facilities. FE was the first to break the news in its edition dated January 28, 2011. According to an Orissa government official who attended the meeting, ?the chief minister told the minister that the move of the Centre without consulting the state is likely to attract legal complications.? He said the extension will have an impact on six-seven ports coming up in Orissa, including Dhamra. But Vasan, according to the release assured Orissa this would have no adverse impact on its ports ?on account of such an expansion.?

Contacted in Delhi, the Kolkata Port Trust chairman ML Meena, said KoPT will have no problem if Orissa looks at that option. ?We are on a strong legal footing.?

Vasan said the port limits were extended to allow Kolkata to launch transloading facilities and that it would not have an adverse impact on Orissa. He has convened a secretary-level meeting in 10 days to sort out the problem.

FE was the first to report that a water war was brewing between the two states over Kolkata Port’s extension.

Patnaik took up the issue with the minister and demanded that the notification be withdrawn immediately. He told Vasan that the Central government notification is ?not acceptable to the state government?.

When Meena had announced the extension of the port limit in Kolkata two weeks ago, he had said it was the only way to save the twin docks of Kolkata and Haldia. The extension would enable the docks to launch transloading facilities through the year and get business from big-size ships. Both Haldia and Kolkata have been battling silt and falling draft. The shipping secretary K Mohan Das and top officials of the state government, including principal secretary commerce & transport, Gagan Kumar Dhal, and principal resident commissioner, Sunil Kumar Bhargava, were present during the discussion between Patnaik and Vasan. The Centre, vide a notification last November, extended the port limit of KoPT to more than 200 km south of Haldia into the Bay of Bengal covering an area of 28,646 sq km blocking the coast of north Orissa where seven new ports are being developed. The state government came to know about it only in January, 2011. Following this, the state chief secretary BKPatnaik, shot off a letter to the shipping secretary on January 22, lodging a stern protest.

Orissa officials claim that the extension of KoPT?s port limits will kill as many as seven potential minor port sites, already notified with their port limits, on the Orissa coast and would greatly affect the expansion and operation of Dhamra Port.