A fact-finding team and CPI leader D Raja on Friday questioned the legality of the restart of land acquisition in Odisha for the proposed $12-billlion POSCO steel plant. After widespread protests, the process has now been put on hold temporarily.

At the release of a fact-finding report here on Friday, Raja, who was at the protest site recently, said the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Korean steel major POSCO had expired in June 2010. “A fresh MoU has not been signed. How can the Government take over the land without that?” he asked.

Madhuresh Kumar, National Organiser of the National Alliance of People’s Movement, said the protesters would explore the option of seeking legal recourse, and if need be even revoke international laws in this regard.

The fact-finding team, mainly consisting of members of the legal fraternity, said they were informed that about 230 cases, many of which were false, had been filed against about 2,000 villagers who had been protesting against the land acquisition since the past seven years. As a result, the villagers cannot move out of the villages.

“There are no cases or actions against the police or hired goons who entered villagers’ homes and beat them up or destroyed their livelihood by ripping apart betel leaf vines,” said senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan.

Calling for respecting dissent rather than criminalising it, the fact-finding team demanded that the Government should withdraw all criminal cases on protesting villagers and order an enquiry into the “abuse of the criminal system to target villagers and take necessary action against the officials concerned”.

On the Government’s claim that some villagers had already taken compensation for land, Raja demanded that a joint committee be set up, with local representation, to verify claims made on both sides.

aditi.n@thehindu.co.in

Related Topics