कुल्लू

HARIPUR NALA,KULLU...
Villagers oppose power project (borrowed from Tribune)4august.

The Hallan-Majhat-Karjan Sangharsh Samiti, which is opposing the setting up of 1.5-MW power project on Haripur (Pakhnose) nullah in Kullu district, has accused the government of ......misusing state machinery to harass villagers.

Convener alleged that villagers were being implicated in false cases at the behest of the private company and cases of theft had been registered even against women. The project, if allowed to come up, would spell doom for over a population of 15,000 of 19 villages in three panchayats as they would be deprived of their main source of drinking water and irrigation. Not only that, the nullah was one of the 40 streams identified for promoting trout fish and the project upstream would also affect the fish farm at Batahar.

He lamented that the district administration ignored their concerns and the sub-divisional magistrate did not record their objection and gave report in favour of the private company under pressure from the higher-ups in the government. The representatives of the committee had met Chief Minister PK Dhumal last month but there was no response. The government was on one hand spending hundred of crores of rupees to bring more land under irrigation and on the other depriving existing land of the irrigation facility. In the instant case over 60,000 bighas of fertile land would be affected.

The state secretariat of the CPM condemned the government for using state terror to dissuade the people from fighting for their genuine rights against private companies. It alleged that Continental Infra Tech Private Limited was in connivance with the state government criminally intimidating people. Once the water got diverted, the main drinking water and four irrigation schemes would become redundant.

The party asked the government to stop appeasing the big houses at the cost of the common people and accept their demands as sustainable development could not be possible without their support. The government had blatantly bent the law to extend a red carpet to private companies and similar kind of violations had occurred in Kashang and other hydroelectric projects.