Nagercoil
Members of the village panchayats and the town panchayats in Padmanabhapuram Assembly constituency in Kanniyakumari district forwarded postcards to the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change against Environment Impact Assessment Notification 2020 in its present form.
The local body members, led by Padmanabhapuram MLA Mano Thangaraj, sent the postcards to Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar.
The protesting local body members said the EIA Notification 2020, which is available now only in English and Hindi should be made available in Tamil and other vernacular languages also so that people from all the State could understand the content of this Notification and give their opinion.
The local body members said they, who could not understand the content of the Notification in the present form, were waiting for the translation of it in Tamil which alone would enable them to understand and react.
Mr. Mano Thangaraj said the Notification, in its present form, was in favour of the rich and the super rich while decimating all others, especially the farmers, fishermen, tribes and also the people living close to the area where the rich and the super rich establish their manufacturing units.
“Even as the entire nation is clamped by COVID-19 fears, the BJP-led Union Government is actively pushing all anti-people projects and policies and actively going ahead with privatization of public sector undertakings. The Narendra Modi-led Central Government, which is claiming to be taking India on the path of rapid growth in all spheres, is only aggressively selling the stakes in the profit-making public sector undertakings, all created by his predecessors over the past several decades after the Independence,” said Mr. Mano Thangaraj after posting the postcard.
As Padmanabhapuram constituency has 26 local bodies, 435 members of these civic bodies sent the postcards to the Union Minister.