On April 14, police in Kanhar fired into the crowd, after a confrontation with 700 protestors, which led to a dozen people being injured, including five policemen.
The resumption of a long-dormant dam project in eastern Uttar Pradesh, has sparked more protests against the NDA government's land ordinance.
The Kanhar dam project, in Sonabhadra district, came into the spotlight last week, after police action against locals protesting the dam's construction that began last December. The project began in 1976, but never really took off.
Shiv Prasad, a leader in the Kanhar Bachao Samiti, says the land remained unused for almost 39 years. "Our main contention is that since there has been such a long delay, either return our land, or reassess the compensation, which is four times the rate of land acquired," he says.
On April 14, police in Kanhar fired into the crowd, after a confrontation with 700 protestors, which led to a dozen people being injured, including five policemen. Four days later, police used rubber bullets and tear gas shells to disperse villagers participating in a sit-in against the dam. "We were sitting there when the police came and started beating us with batons,'' says 70-year-old Zahoor Ahmed, pointing to a deep gash on his head. "When all our efforts failed, we used minimum force to quell them and take them away from the area," says Sanjay Kumar, Sonabhadra's District Magistrate.
Tribals and farmers in the affected area began protests in December, citing the earlier UPA government's land acquisition act, which has a clause mandating that unutilised land be returned to landowners in five years. But according to the NDA's land acquisition ordinance, this clause is diluted to say it can be any period, specified at the time of setting up the project.
The locals call this, "anti-farmer.'' The Uttar Pradesh administration claims that villagers were compensated in 1976, which makes them eligible for a rehabilitation package of Rs. 7 lakhs for three generations of each family, as stipulated by the 2013 UPA act.
The NDA government tabled the controversial land ordinance in the Lok Sabha on Monday -- when Parliament reconvened -- amid loud protests and slogan-shouting by the opposition.