Abhijit Roy Chowdhury
Polavaram project is taken up by Andhra Pradesh government with targets of irrigation, electricity production and water-source diversion at Krishna-Kachhar at village Polavaram of east and west Godawari districts, at a distance of 42 kms from Godawari barraze over upper Godawari river.
Senior BJD leaders held demonstration in front of Gandhi statue in forecourt of parliament house and shouted slogan against union environment minister Jairam Ramesh. “hosh mein aao, stop ‘Pollavarm’ project” , they shouted .
BJD leaders also accused the centre for adapting double standard and asked it to stop step motherly treatment to the state.
Leader of the house in Rajya Sabha Piyarimohan Mohapatra said “the Polavaram project will take away 6000 hectares of tribal land and both Chhattisgarh and Odisha will inundated with floods” .
He also ridiculed the decision to build 30 km of wall to check possible threat of flood and lamented that minister for environment and forest is telling “blatant” lie.
“As Jairam Ramesh elected to the upper house from neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh and just to please the congress government in the state, minister has cleared the project, said BJD leaders.
In fact the MoEF also wants to declare it as national project and seeks Rs 10000 crore from the centre, avers BJD leader.
BJD leaders who participated in the demonstration in front of parliament house were leader of the house in Lok Sabha Arjun Charan Sethi, Bharturi Mahatab, Mohan Jena, Baijyant Panda, Prasanna kumar Patsanai, Rudra Mahadeb Ray, Tatakath Satpathy, Laxman Tudu, Renubala Pradhan, Baishnab Parida, Kishore kumar Mohanty and four BJD MLAs were also present.