BHUBNESWAR: Vedanta Aluminium and Korea’s Posco got a major reprieve on Friday after the Supreme Court cleared the decks for their mega projects in Orissa.

The apex court allowed Vedanta to mine bauxite in tribal-rich Niyamgiri hills while it allowed conversion of forest land for Posco’s Rs 52,000-crore integrated steel plant near Paradip. Both companies had been fighting legal battles over captive mines and conversion of forest land. Locals and environmentalists had challenged the Orissa government’s decision to hand over the Niyamgiri hills to Vedanta and forest land to Posco.

Vedanta Aluminium, which is setting up a refinery at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district with Orissa Mining Corporation at an investment of Rs 4,500 crore, will go for open-cast bauxite mining in Niyamgiri, considered a sacred place by the local Dangaria kondh tribe.

“We will start building approach roads to the mine by October. We hope to start mining some time around December 2009-January 2010,” a Vedanta official told ET. “We hope to mine close to 2 million tonnes of bauxite initially.

This is likely to be scaled up to around 3 mt to meet the requirement of our 1-million tonne alumina refinery...

Our mining plan is ready. We will start environment protection work within 6-8 months. Thereafter, the mines have to be exposed by stripping the top soil.” In so far as the Posco venture goes, of the 4,004 acres allotted to Posco India, 3,300 acres are forest land.

The apex court has now granted permission for conversion of 2,598 acres of forest land. Accordingly, the Union ministry of environment and forest can approve dereservation of the forest land.