Bhubaneswar, Dec 19: The Orissa government has cleared the Rs 40,000 crores mega steel plant proposed by the Arcelor-Mittal paving the path for signing of the MoU during the month.

The state level single window clearance authority cleared five projects including the 12 MTPA at a meeting here yesterday presided over by Chief Secretary Ajit Kumar Tripathy.

The proposal would be now formally placed before the Project Clearance Authority headed by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here on Wednesday.

Arcelor Mittal chief Laxmi Narayan Mittal on July seven last met chief minister Naveen Patnaik and proposed to set up a 12 million tonne green field steel plant with an investment of Rs.40,000 crore. The state government,while welcoming the proposal immediately constituted a Joint Working Group to facilitate the project.

The Joint Working Group after discussion with the high level official team of the Arcelor Mittal,proposed seven sites but later the Arcelor Mittal zeroed in three sites and made it clear that final section of the site would be communicated shortly.

According to the official sources,the project is most likely to be established in Patna in the tribal dominated Keonjhar district and the first phase of the project would be 4 MTPA for which the State Project Clearance Authority would give its nod tomorrow.

The company has requested the government to provide 8000 acres of land out of which nearly 1000 acres would be required for the Arcelor Mittal to put up a captive power plant.

UNI