Bhubaneswar, Sep 12: After the Centre declared the Multi-purpose irrigation project in Andhra Pradesh as a national project and announced to bear all the expenses towards it, yesterday the ruling party in Odisha made its protest against Polavaram project more intense by making the announcement to step up its opposition to the multi-purpose irrigation project in Andhra Pradesh.
It opened up its action plan on this pertaining controversial issue in which it said that it would stage dharna ahead of Raj Bhawan on Sept 14 as a part of its protest. In this connection, the party is expected to submit a memorandum to Governor SC Jamir addressing President Pranab Mukherjee. Apart from this, the regional party members would stage demonstration ahead of the Collector’s office on Sept 20 in 7 districts which are to be affected by this project. The party also warned that it would go on a hartal on October 1 across the seven Southern Odisha districts, Malkangiri, Koraput, Rayagada, Nabarangpur, Ganjam, Kandhamal and Gajapati, if the Centre doesn’t intervene into the matter by September 20. All this information was given by BJD spokesperson, Suryanarayan Patro and president of BYJD, Sanjay Das Burma in a press conference held here yesterday.
Notably, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday presided over a meeting of senior BJD leaders at the Naveen Nivas here to chalk out party’s strategy on the issue. Earlier on Friday, the state government rejected Union and Andhra Pradesh governments’ request to hold public hearings in the to-be affected villages in the state citing that the matter is sub judice in the apex court. The matter is also pending in the National Green Tribunal. Besides, environmental impact assessment guidelines say public hearing is mandatory before granting clearance to any project. But, Polavaram project got environmental nod in 2005 without any public.
