Mangalore: People Raise Voice Against Kochi-Mangalore Gas Pipeline
Pics: Dayanand Kukkaje
Daijiworld Media Network – Mangalore (SP)
Mangalore, Aug 26: Over a hundred people from 13 villages participated in a meeting held at Vaidyanatha Hall in Gurpur on Thursday August 25, and decided to put up a united fight against a pipeline that is proposed to be laid between Kochi and Bangalore via Mangalore.
The pipeline project is meant for transporting natural gas from Kochi to Bangalore, and people of the villages through which the pipeline passes, are worried about the problems they will have to go through because of this pipeline.
Gas Authority of India owned by the union government plans to lay a huge pipeline deep inside the earth, and the government has served notices to the farmers about land acquisition, giving them 21 days time. Pipes with a diameter of 30 inches will be embedded five feet deep. 66 feet-wide stretch of land will be acquired in these fields, and the same will be handed back to the farmers after levelling it once the pipeline is laid. The stretch of the land under which pipeline passes cannot be used for laying of roads, construction activity, digging of well, growing of big trees etc. The farmers get ten percent of the value of their land as compensation in addition to relief towards crop loss.
The meeting decided to organize protest meetings at every village, meeting of the deputy commissioner and handing over memorandum to him against the project, including religious leaders in the fight against the pipeline, and to invite people’s representatives and well-known social activists in this struggle. The protestors also decided to meet Salil Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty International, during his visit to the city on August 30, and to hand him over a petition against the execution of this project.
The locals are not ready to rely on the promises of the authority. They recollect that they had suffered a lot during the laying of MRPL pipeline in the year 2000. Speaking on the occasion, Krishnaprasada Rai suggested for locating of the pipeline beneath the sea instead of passing the same through land. He also said that another pipeline of Religare is set to be laid in the coast, although clear-cut details about its route are not known. He added that the village accountants have been preparing to serve notices to about 1,000 villagers of Kandavara, Muloor and nearby villages soon for this pipeline.
Krishnaprasada Rai of the Anti Pipeline Committee, vice-president, Francis Pinto, Sujir Kumar Shetty and others were present.
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