NAPM - Press Release Nov 25 - Modi and the Narmada
Modiji will you answer these ?
Against the false claims and campaigns, you owe this
to the Narmada valley
While the election campaign is heated up in Madhya Pradesh
and promises are showered upon the voters, Mr. Narendra Modi is to visit the Narmada
valley once again, this time right at the heart of the Narmada
movement, raising questions over injustice and illegalities infesting the
Sardar Sarovar Project. It is known to everyone that lakhs of people; adivasis,
farmers, fish workers, and others in Badwani, Dhar, Khargone and Alirajpur
are not just voters, but sufferers of the Dam which Modi himself and
his government is pushing to its completion,, without any concern for the utter
violation of law and justice. It remains to be seen and watched as to what
statements he makes at Badwani tomorrow and what questions he answers!!
The controversial statement Mr. Modi made in his populous
rally in Bhopal last month is
obviously challengeable. He claimed that Madhya Pradesh is to get 800 MW of
free power from Sardar Sarovar, which is getting ‘lost’, due to non-completion
of the Dam to its final height! This being an utterly false statement
that was made by the ‘aspiring-PM’, and was repeated in his press conference at
Bhopal , he may not hesitate to
repeat this lie during his public meeting at Badwani tomorrow. Voters from a
few hundred villagers and densely populated region of Nimad will surely judge
him on this and expect him to answer the following questions:
1. Does Mr.
Modi know that Sardar Sarovar is NOT Gujarat ’s project
alone, but is an inter-state project ?
2. Is Mr. Modi not
aware of the fact that Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have to meet 57% and 27%
of the Project’s capital cost on power generation and are not to get any power
‘free’ or by charity?
3. Is Mr. Modi not
aware that Madhya Pradesh has already invested Rs. 2065 crores out
of about Rs. 5,000 crores that is, at present, the share of M.P. (capital cost
for power) and raised a dispute over Rs. 1,500 crores, as the state is not
agreeing to Gujarat’s pressure to pay interest on the borrowing amount?
4. What happened
to his promise (from Anjad in 2005) of lighting up the whole of M.P, if the dam
is permitted to be raised by 9 mts. The dam height was raised, but there has
been no real diwali for the farmers of the valley since then.
5. Does he know
that Madhya Pradesh – not the CM or the government- but the
farmers – adivasis, Mankars, others farmers, fish workers (water melon
cultivators) potters etc. are losing 20,800 + hecatres of land,
including prime agricultural and horticultural land and forests ?
6. Does he know
and realize the huge impact of impoverishment, never compensatable on the Nimad
region, with agricultural prosperity, to be caused by such massive submergence?
7. Can he assert
from the dais in Badwani that rehabilitation is complete, in full compliance
with the law, including the Narmada Tribunal Award, state rehabilitation policy
and judgemnts of the Supreme Court?
8. Can he prove
that all affected farmers have obtained not just paper pattas, but actual
possession of alternative cultivable and irrigable land as due legal
entitlement, when thousands are still deprived of the same?
9. Does Mr. Modi
know that thousands of adivasis in the hilly region of M.P.,
as well as in Maharashtra and Gujarat itself, whose lands have been
submerged since 1994 (and since 2000 even in some plain villages) but
not yet rehabilitated, have been facing illegal losses, annually ?
10. If he is only briefed properly by the
authorities and his own party, who have not even cared to visit the affected
villages after the devastation, how can he know the destruction of thousands
and more houses, thousands of acres of farm lands, with standing crop, due to
dam-induced floods, not natural.
11. Does Mr. Modi have any sensitivity towards
these and lakhs of families who have a sword of brutal eviction and submergence
looming large over their lives ? Does he believe in the false figure of
‘0’ balance families to be rehabilitated, while 2.5 lakh people live in the
submergence zone as on date? Does not Mr. Modi, who went all the way
upto Uttarakhand, have any sensitivity for these lakhs of people, in his
adjacent state?
12. What does he know about the use and
misuse of Rs. 1900 crores rehabilitation funds for M.P. and the massive
corruption with upto 2000+ fake registries, CAG Reports on corruption
in the construction works at resettlement sites, leading to dismissal of 27
officials at Badwani ?
13. Neither Shivraj Singh nor Modi utter a word
about corruption in Narmada rehabilitation, canal construction
and compensation disbursement? Why? Can he and will he (Modi) still
facilitate Shivraj for the ‘good job’ in rehabilitation?
14. Mr. Modi takes pride in spending Rs.
2,500 crores on the statue of farmers leader Sardar Patel, which ismore
than the amount for rehabilitation of 245 villagesand one township affected
by Sardar Sarovar ? Is such tourism just and justifiable?
15. How will Mr. Modi justify the imposed
sacrifice on the prosperous region of Nimad, taking over 150 kms of
Narmada and yet not give Kutch and Saurashtra their due, compelling them to
go to the Supreme Court and return empty handed !
16. How and why is Modi de-notifying 4
lakh hecatres of the Sardar Sarovar command area land for corporates? And
how can he explain the huge cost escalation of Sardar Sarovar, which has
changed the cost-benefit ratio ?
17. Even after a cost of 70,000 crores
and Rs. 5700+ crores received from the Govt. of India, for canal construction,
why has Mr. Modi’s Govt. not completed the canal work Gujarat beyond 30% and
how can he justify filling up the reservoir further and drowning dozens of
villages, when existing waters are not being used?
18. Mr. Modi must certainly be aware of the huge
illegal sand mining in the Sardar Sarovar affected villages, destroying the
shelf life of the reservoir itself? Why is he silent on this?
With all this and much more, when Modiji is
insisting in the dam height to be raised, will he and the Chief Minister of
Madhya Pradesh take the responsibility for the fate and future of 2.5 lakh
people by drowning houses of 45,000 houses and families, temples and mosques,
schools and dispensaries, shops and panchayats, and millions of trees, proving
all compliance reports to be utterly false.
Please, Mr. Modi we
would like to hear your candid answers to each of these queries, as we are not
to stop you from your speech, not are to do policing, as you do against us,
inflict violence against adivasis to activists. Please do not run away from his
reality to a dreamy world of empty political promises.
Saavabehan
Devram
Kanera
Kailash Awasya Medha Patkar
Madubhai
Bhagiram
Vidyabai
Kailash Harla
Iqbalbhai
Hiradaram
Mustakim
Chacha
