States »EasPosted at: Aug 13 2021 7:48PM 24 KBSS activists held for violent protest against a Mega piped water project in coastal Kendrapara
Kendrapara, Aug 13 (UNI) Rajkanika police on Friday arrested 24 persons for assaulting the police personnel and ransacking the project site during a violent agitation against a mega piped water
project over Kharasrota river at Barunidiha in the district.
Thousands of protesters under the banner of Kharasrota Banchao Sangram Samiti(KBSS)
violating the Section 144 CrPc,broke the police cordon and went on ransacking the project site
to lodge their protest against the project.
During the face off,some police personnel ,including SDPO of Pattaundai Sandhyarani Behuria sustained minor injuries.
Rajkanika Police station IIC Umakanta Nayak, lodged an FIR in this regards at Rajkanika police station against hundreds of KBSS activists ,including two former MLAs Dolagobinda Nayak and Debendranath Sharma
All the 22 arrested KBSS members were produced before the local court which remanded them
into jail custody after rejecting their bail applications, Kendrapara SP Madkar Sandeep Sampat said.
The protestors had ransacking the vehicles, JCB , ambulance, water tanker, camp office, temporary container shelter rooms , furniture and other machinery of the Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited.
They also attacked the staff of the company ,entrusted by the state government to execute the
Mega pipe water project .
The locals of Aul and Rajkanika are up in arms and protesting the mega piped water project as they apprehended that the Kharasrota river, lifeline of the two blocks ,would dry if water would be drawn for the mega pipe water project.
They further said people of the two blocks will face acute scarcity of drinking water and agriculture would be affected.The flora and fauna of world famous Bhitarkanika national park and also the bio –diversity of the Bhitarkanika National park will be at stake .
As per the plan the project would supply drinking water to 92 Panchayats of chandabali, Tihidi, Dhamanagar,and Basudevpur blocks and 47 wards of urban areas of Bhadrak district.
IG (CR) of Police Narasingh Bhol, has been camping at Kendrapara since Thursday and
monitoring the situation with the SP of Kendrapara in view of palpable tension prevailing in the
area.
District collector Amrit Ruturaj said the work of the mega piped water project has been going on at
the proposed project site amid tight police arrangements and no untoward incident was reported today.
The Law enforcing department, the Collector said, will take legal action against those involved in yesterday’s violence .
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