Land acquisition for the South Korean steel major Posco's proposed steel plant near Paradip was completed on Thursday with the Odisha government demolishing 25 more betel vines at Gobindpur village near Paradip in Jagatsinghpur district. 'We have acquired 2,700 acres of land for Posco's first phase of 8mtpa capacity steel mill. The local administration acquired 700 acres of land during this last phase. The acquired land will be handed over to the state owned Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO) soon,' said Jagatsinghpur district collector Satya Kumar Mallick. Admitting that there was opposition from a section of people during land acquisition, Mallick said that the government has distributed Rs 6.72 crore among the beneficiaries. A total of 488 betel vines were demolished and their land acquired in Gobindpur village during the last phase. The land acquisition for Posco project was completed in five different phases spanning over two years, the district collector said rejecting allegation of use of force for the exercise. “We have acquired land from the people who agreed for it,” he said. The steel major which initially wanted 4,004 acres of land to set up a 12mtpa steel mill at an investment of Rs 52,000 crore, later changed its design in view of the stiff opposition and scaled down its requirement to only 2,700 acres of land to start construction of 8mtpa capacity steel plant on the first phase. Responding to opposition of the residents of Dhinkia village, the state government announced that there would be no land acquisition from the particular village as the people were totally against the project. Briefing newsmen in the state capital here, steel and mines minister Rajanikant Singh said preparation of the draft MoU was in an advance stage. “The senior officials of the Steel and Mines and Industry departments are scheduled to meet next week to discuss and finalise the draft MoU. However, some clarifications were awaited from Posco India relating to various aspects of the deal,” Singh said, adding that clarifications would be sent to the law department for final scrutiny. He hoped that the fresh MoU would be signed between the state government and Posco by end of August after the document gets chief minister’s approval. Meanwhile, Posco India was asked to start Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities in the proposed plant site area. Posco officials and IDCO officials will have a meeting soon to finalise the strategy for the CSR activities, official sources said.