The mega refinery project at Ratnagiri could be in cold storage for now but the script could change after the national elections in May.
“Politics has prevailed for now but this is only a temporary setback,” said an industry source familiar with the project.
Earlier this week, the feuding BJP and Shiva Sena had agreed to scrap the refinery’s originally planned location at Nanar in coastal Maharashtra as one of the conditions for coming together in the elections.
This was not entirely unexpected. The site has been in the eye of a storm for over a year now with locals opposed to the idea of a refinery coming up in an environmentally-sensitive region.
