Steel minister Virbhadra Singh, who has set a target of achieving 124 million tonne of steel production by 2012, is mighty upset with the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) for letting loose “activists” on the POSCO project. In so doing, he almost set the tone for Friday's Governance Now seminar on "Steel and Sustainable Development" at the Park Hotel (Sansad Marg) in New Delhi where he will be the chief guest.

Singh was referring to the four-member panel comprising three activists - Uma Pingle, Devendra Pandey and V Suresh - who have opposed the Rs 54,000 crore Korean steel giant POSCO’s project in Jagatsinghpur in Orissa. The project is billed as the largest FDI in India and proposes to set up a plant with production capacity of 12 million tonne.

"What I feel is that the ministry has constituted several panels comprising of activists who have their own agenda. In the matter of POSCO this is what has happened. I feel they are going beyond their mandate as members and their views are being coloured by the activism," he told PTI.

Singh said "there should be the people who should have broader perspective. Activists have a very limited view and they impose their views on everybody. That is the main problem."

He further said "the approach has to be pragmatic and not dogmatic...When there is an issue of development some sort of compromises have to be made".

Asked if he would seek Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intervention for clearances, the senior minister said "he (PM) knows about it... he is keen that POSCO project takes off ..."