Odisha government to return 206 hectares of land taken for Tata project| Roadsleeper.com

The 206 hectares of land was acquired for a Tata Steel plant near Gopalpur coast in Ganjam district. And will be returned to the original land owners.

The Odisha government acquired 6,900 hectares of land in Kalipalli and a dozen other villages for the proposed facility in 1996. However, the plan never took off.

The Odisha Cabinet headed by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik decided to return the 206 acres of land to the legal heirs at a cabinet meeting held on Friday.

“Considering the public interest, the government has decided to return 206,685 acres of land which remained unused for the last two decades,” said Chief Secretary SC Mohapatra.

He added, “The land will be handed over to the original owners or to their legal heirs under the provisions of Rule 20 on Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition”.

The land losers were compensated at that time, the government decided to waive the amount paid to the affected.

But Narayan Reddy, a former CPI MLA from Chhatrapur, who led the protest against the proposed steel plant, said returning land was not enough.

Recently, CM Patnaik urged Tata Sons to expand its footprint in the state. He met Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran and discussed the company’s various projects including Tata Steel.