POSCO's Orissa Project is not all about Steel

Even after repeated dates offered by the government officials and the steel and mines minister of Orissa, the renewal of Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) between the Orissa Government and the Korean Steel major POSCO couldn’t materialise. The MoU signed on June 22, 2005, which had a five years’ validity term, expired since June 21, 2010.

The high handed approach of the Indian government of Orissa and its agencies to pursue the India project of POSCO on the ground even without a valid MoU raised many questions from different quarters. When the former law minister and now a Congress Leader and member in the National Law Board Narasimha Mishra has repeatedly raised the issue and questioned the land acquisition by the government, senior BJD leaders like Dr Damodar Rout and a few others have always insisted that the government must go for immediate renewal of the MoU.

While the political and public debates over legitimacy of land acquisition by government agencies and the local administration for a company without any valid MoU placed the government of Orissa more at fault, this also built pressure on POSCO and the Orissa government both for an early renewal of the MoU.