Taking chief minister Naveen Pattnaik’s reassertion to renew the MoU with Posco for its mega steel plant in Orissa as a challenge, the anti-land acquisition brigade led by Posco Pratirodha Sangram Samiti and the Left parties today threatened to continue their stir till the project is scrapped.
The anti-Posco activists were observing ‘Black Day’ today at Patana village under Dhinkia panchayat to mark the completion of five years of Posco’s MoU with the state government.
. PPSS conducted mass rallies at Gobindpur and Dhinkia in which thousands of women and children sporting black badges participated.
They congregated at Patana hat where PPSS leaders along with their Left party comrades and social activists addressed a mass gathering. The anti- Posco activists of three panchayts Dhinkia, Nuagaon and Gadkujang took part in the rally and the meeting.
Addressing the gathering, anti-land movement leaders said, while the chief minister, on one hand, wished to visit the project site to find out the problems of the affected villagers, on the other hand, he has announced to renew the MoU with Posco. “We will continue the stir till the project is shifted”, they observed.
The speakers said, thousands of people will lose their land and livelihood for the Posco project.
Besides, there will be irreparable loss to flora and fauna and pollution of water bodies. This large cost to the people and ecology does not justify industrialization in the name of development, they added.
Among others PPSS leader Abhya Sahoo, sarpanch of Dhinkia panchayat, Sisir Mohapatra, CPI leader, Dibakar Nayak, CPM leaders Ashish Kanungo, Samajabadi party leader Rabi Behera, JMM leader, Arun Jena, Forward Bloc leader, Santosh Mitra, RJD leader, Hemant Kumar, anti-land acquisition leader Prafulla Samantray, social activist, Rabi Das, PPSS leader, Prasant Paikaray, addressed the gathering.
