The State Government would request the Centre to facilitate the Posco project near Paradip, according to a decision taken at a high-level meeting held at the State Secretariat here on Thursday.
The meeting was chaired by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and attended by Steel & Mines Minister Prafulla Mallick, Chief Secretary GC Pati and the departmental Secretary.
“The Chief Secretary has been asked to discuss the Posco issue with the Central Government. The Central government will be requested to fix a date for holding of discussions. Representatives of the Central and State Governments and Posco will remain present during the discussions,” Minister Mallick told reporters.
He said the State Government has no information on the Posco setting up plants outside Odisha. The South Korean company should first come forward to hold talks on whether it would set up its plant in Odisha or not. It should first spell out what kind of cooperation it expects from the State Government, which would do whatever is possible within the scope of the law.
Significantly, the Posco has recently signed an agreement with the Uttam Steel and Power to do a feasibility study to set up a 3-million-tonne-per-annum (MTPA) integrated steel plant in Maharashtra.
The Odisha project of the Posco has been stuck in a decade-long regulatory quagmire starting from land acquisition to getting raw material linkage to the proposed plant.
The company had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Odisha Government as far back as on June 22, 2005.