Take our land, plead Gosikhurd-hit villagers

Nagpur: Over 800 villagers living within the range of Gosikhurd dam are demanding that even their land should be acquired for the project. Not displaced, but the project has left them stranded for years, they claim.
Located in Nagpur and Bhandara districts, there are villages where only the hamlets have been acquired, but not the farms. The new settlements are far away from their farmland.

Khapri, over 50 kms from Nagpur, is flanked by land acquired for the dam as well as a tiger project. The village itself has not been acquired as it was not needed for Gosikhurd project, said the residents. Those from Salebhati a village, resettled at a new site, said there has been no water supply since the day they shifted. The locals have to buy water from those having borewells in the vicinity.

Kujba in Kuhi tehsil is surrounded by the river from three sides when it floods. Yet, the villagers are forced to stay put as the land has not been acquired for the dam project, though nearby area around has been taken over, complained the locals.

Each group had a different story to say, with a single demand that their land should be taken over even if it was not needed for the Gosikhurd project.

Led by independent MLA from Achalpur Bachhu Kadu, more than 500 of the villagers had come down to Nagpur for a meeting with the district’s guardian minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule. As much as 800 hectares of land has been demanded to be acquired in different villages.

After the meeting, Bawankule announced that he has formed a committee, headed by divisional commissioner Anup Kumar. It would evaluate a proposal to acquire the land for a solar power project. However, the compensation may not be in lines with the new Land Acquisition Act, which pays five times of the current rates of an area. This is because solar power has to be priced at Rs3 a unit. So the cost of acquisition as well has to be fixed considering the cap on price of electricity generated from the project. Another meeting will be held with chief minister Devendra Fadnavis at a later date, he said.

Kadu said the basic demand is to treat even these villagers as project-affected persons (PAPs) under Gosikhurd. They may not have been displaced but certainly their lives have been disrupted by the project. If the rate of compensation derived for the solar project does not meet their expectations, the agitation would continue,” said Kadu.