Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, Nov 3: Pushing the Posco project to further uncertainty, the South Korean steel major has returned a piece of land allotted for construction of the company’s guest house to the state government.
“Posco has sent a letter to the general administration (GA) department expressing its desire to return the land allotted to it for construction of a company guest house in the state capital,” Chief Secretary G C Pati told reporters here Monday.
The steel major, which had proposed to set up a 12-million tonne capacity mega steel plant near Paradip at an investment of Rs 52,000 crore, was allotted 1.700 acre of land at Bharatpur Mouza in the state capital for construction of its guest house and the company’s chairman-cum-managing director’s residence in 2008. However, the land remained unused.
The GA department, while reviewing the utilisation of leased-out land March 7, 2014 found that Posco had not used the land. The company was issued a show-cause notice regarding this, departmental officials said.The company in its reply had sought time to utilise the land and explained it could not utilise the land as its main project near Paradip was delayed, they said.
The company has now offered to return the land to the government and desired to get back its amount deposited during the time of allotment.“We are examining Posco’s letter of request,” Pati said.
Earlier, the company had put its mega steel project on hold as it was not provided the long term raw material linkage.