Warlike situation prevailed on Monday at Kalinga Nagar industrial estate and Posco project site in Orissa with the armed police forces making their last efforts to clear the areas of the local residents to facilitate establishment of steel projects.
Two major investments — Rs 15,000-crore Tata Steel project at Kalinga Nagar and Rs 52,000-crore Posco steel plant at Kujang near Paradip — have got delayed due to prolonged agitation by the local people over the issue of displacement.
The situation – which continues to remain tensed after the police opened fire on the local people at the two sites last week — turned volatile on Monday as the leaders of the Opposition parties pledged their support for the anti-displacement activists.
“The Orissa government has literally declared a war on the local people who are opposing displacement from their ancestral lands. Those who are opposing are being mercilessly killed by the police. This is no-governance,” BJP Rajya Sabha member Balbir Punj, who led a three-member BJP parliamentary team to the trouble-torn Kalinga Nagar and Posco project site, told mediapersons here. The two other members of the team were Nishikant Dubey and Rudra Narayan Pany.
The Congress also on Monday launched scathing attack on the ruling BJD saying that the state government was now preoccupied with “man hunting business” to grab land.
“Ever since this government came to power in 2000, it has been indulging in killing sprees of people, including tribals to acquire land for private companies. It does not spare even opposition leaders who try to resist it tyranny,” Orissa Pradesh Congress president Sibananda Ray said.
He cited that party leader Umesh Chandra Swain and CPI Lok Sabha member Bibhu Prasad Tarai were arrested as they tried to reach out the people injured in police lathicharge at Posco project site.