In Chutka last month, the public hearing was conducted with 200 odd chosen people while more than 8,000 people were stopped from entering the official venue and they staged a sit-in protest a few hundred meters away.
TRIBAL WARS NUKE SERIES
Be it Jaitapur, Gorakhpur or Mithivirdi, we have witnessed a series of such public hearings where all the above norms are openly flouted and the local officials orchestrate a farce, often aided with heavy deployment of police to keep the real stake-holders at bay.įrom a local Hindi newspaper: public hearing in Chutka at the gunpoint But on the ground, these hearings have turned out to be a complete farce played by the local administration, hand-in-gloves with the nuclear operator. The proceedings have to be duly recorded and the local people’s opinion has to be respected, as per the law. The EIA report is supposed to be given to the people in the area one month in advance, translated in their own language.
TRIBAL WARS NUKE PROFESSIONAL
A public hearing is a constitutionally mandated procedure for taking people’s consent for the Environmental Impact Assessment(EIA) report, supposed to be prepared by an professional and independent organisation with proper accreditation. While the opposition for the reactor locally has stemmed from justified livelihood questions and the wider circle of activists and citizens have also joined them on the larger issues of nuclear safety and transparency and accountability of the nuclear establishment in India, it is the farcical public hearing that happened on February 17th that forced the Chutka adivasis to come up to Delhi this time. In Chutka, the govt owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) is building 2 Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors(PHWRs) of 700 MW each.Ĭhutka people protest in Bhopal, March 3, 2014 They have stood in opposition because a nuclear power park has been thrust on them against their will, threatening their lives and livelihoods. These people have not chosen such hard struggle, being anti-nuclear is not an ideological choice for them. On their way to Delhi, they also staged a protest in Bhopal, the state capital of Madhya Pradesh in central India. Why does the government brutally silence local dissent and turns the public hearings invariably into cruel jokes, when it is so sure about the shining claims of nuclear energy? If it is the safest technology and the best solution for the people’s progress, why is their constitutionally mandated participation in the decision-making process denied so violently?Īfter travelling more than 1000kms, hundreds of adivasis from Chutka reached Delhi today and registered their protest at jantar Mantar, the designated spot in the capital of democratic India for expressing dissent.
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