The Hindu : Minister to meet Medha today

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 06, 2002

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National

Minister to meet Medha today
By Gargi Parsai

Activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, led by Medha Patkar, staging a dharna outside the Shram Shakti Bhawan in New Delhi on Tuesday. - Photo: V. Sudershan

NEW DELHI, MARCH 5 The Union Water Resources Minister, Arjun Charan Sethi, and the Water Resources Secretary, B.N. Navalawala, will meet tomorrow the Narmada Bachao Andolan leader, Medha Patkar, and representatives of the villages in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra threatened by the Sardar Sarovar dam in Gujarat.

This will be the first meeting in two years between the anti-dam agitationists and the nodal Ministry for dam construction.

This emerged after Ms. Patkar staged a day-long dharna amid heavy police bandobast outside the Shram Shakti office of the Ministry. Initially, the Ministry said the Union Minister of State, Ms. Bijoya Chakravorty, would meet the agitators today as the Minister was ``not well''. Later, however, the offices of the Minister and the Secretary confirmed an appointment for 12.30 p.m. tomorrow. This seems to have satisfied Ms. Patkar who called off the dharna to attend a ``jal sammelan'' organised by Rajendra Singh of Jalbirabari.

About 15 villagers accompanying Ms. Patkar were earlier taken to the Parliament Street police station for violating Section 144 Cr.PC. They were later let off. Ministry officials did not make themselves available for comment despite repeated attempts.

Speaking to The Hindu, Ms. Patkar said she must have been in Ahmedabad but had to come here to protest the move of the engineer/officials of the Ministry to raise the height of the Narmada dam from the present 90 metres to 100 metres by monsoon, even before the displaced families were rehabilitated and resettled.

She alleged that the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) - the decision-making body for the Sardar Sarovar dam - and the Water Resources Ministry, were holding ``informal'' meetings to push the project through the ``backdoor''. She challenged the ``false claims'' made by the State Governments on rehabilitation.

The authorities were out to use the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee's `diktat' of January 24 to compel the Rehabilitation and Environment Sub-groups of the NCA to permit further construction. The Maharashtra Government was not invited for the meeting, convened by the Prime Minister, with the Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh Chief Ministers and the Union Minister for Water Resources and senior officials, she said.

At the meeting, the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, handed over a cheque of Rs. 41 crores to the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, to give additional cash compensation to the project-affected people in his State.

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