Forest land diversion stalls IREL project in Odisha
BHUBANESWAR: Land acquisition hurdles continue to plague key infrastructure and industrial projects in Odisha with central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) now voicing concerns.
The IREL (India) Ltd (formerly Indian Rare Earths Ltd) has flagged serious issues over forest land diversion delaying its joint venture mining project in Krushnaprasad area in Puri district.
The central PSU under the Department of Atomic Energy, in partnership with the Odisha government's Industrial Development Corporation (now merged with Odisha Mining Corporation), had formed IREL-IDCOL, a joint venture company for the extraction of strategic and atomic minerals from the Krushnaprasad heavy mineral deposit.
Sources said the project, which received a letter of intent (LoI) from the Steel and Mines department on June 17, 2022, aimed at extracting Monazite, Zircon, Ilmenite, Rutile, Sillimanite, and Garnet, minerals vital to India's strategic interests, especially Monazite, which contains Thorium and rare earth elements.
However, the project has run into hurdles due to forest classification issues in the proposed mining area. Of the 852.45 hectares (ha) identified in the LoI, around 581 ha were later determined to be forest land, much of it under the Pitisal proposed reserve forest.
Initially, Chilika DFO permitted a differential GPS (DGPS) survey over 540 ha of forest land but following a survey, Krushnaprasad tehsildar authenticated the presence of 580.8 ha of forest land within the lease area. Subsequently, the joint venture company submitted applications for environmental and forest clearances last year.
While the forest diversion proposal was cleared by the project screening committee on October 7, 2024, complications arose during subsequent site inspections.
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