Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Extending her support to them, Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar met Agriculture College students protesting against attempts to take away land of their institute for developing ‘city forest and oxygen zone’, and stated that she would seek support of Kisan Morcha for their struggle.
“I will ensure Kisan Morcha leaders including Rakesh Tikait and Yogendra Yadav’s take part in your struggle to save your institute land,” Patkar said addressing the protesting students.
She denounced the government’s attempts to take land from the college which is the only agriculture research facility in Malwa region.
Agricultural College students have been protesting since Wednesday, a day after district administration officials had called up their dean enquiring about college land as they had thought of developing a city forest and oxygen zone there.
Apart from education, the college is contributing to agricultural research and extension.
This college has been working in the field of agricultural research, teaching and extension since its establishment in 1959.
For the improvement of soil health, long-term experiments have been conducted for the last 26 years under the All India Rainfed Agricultural Research Project in the Agricultural College.
The recommendations obtained from these experiments have been found to be very useful for soil health and for making soybean based agriculture sustainable. Under the experiment, findings related to carbon sequestration and carbon economy are being obtained, which are useful in the scenario of climate change. These experiments have been published in national and international research journals.
“If our college land is acquired then the useful research work going on for the last 26 years will be affected which is not in the interest of both agriculture and farmers. Similarly, another experiment ‘Land Refining and Nutrient Providing’ has been done since 1995 on the same land. If this site is used for other purposes, then the study will hit,” the protestors said.
Bid to transfer land to mafia: Yadav
Congress senior leader Arun Yadav also met protesting students and extended his support to them. He alleged that the government is trying to grab the college’s land with help from officers and hand over the same to the land mafia.
“Congress government passed a resolution in 2018 stating that the college will be developed into a university. If its land is acquired, the dream of university will perish,” he added.
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