Torgatta protesters give 7-dayultimatum to G’chiroli admin

Nagpur: Members of different gram sabhas assembled at Torgatta, a south Gadchiroli village located near Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh border, gave a one-week ultimatum to the district administration on Thursday.
The representatives of ‘Damkondvahi Bachao Andolan Samiti’ and ‘Surjagarh Iilaka Ghotul Samiti’ have warned Gadchiroli administration of shifting the protests to district headquarters if government officials don’t come to meet them as Torgatta.
The protesting tribals of Etapalli taluka of Gadchiroli, now joined by their Chhattisgarh counterparts, have been agitating for the last 26 days at Torgatta. They are demanding scrapping of proposed mining projects at Damkondvahi and expansion plans of Surjagarh mines.
They claim that these projects have been sanctioned without the consent of the gram sabha, which is empowered to approve them as Gadchiroli comes under the scheduled area where the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act, 1996, is in force. The protesters have also demanded an offence be registered against a private mining company which has submitted fake documents for excavation in around 150 hectares.
The agitators, who have submitted a memorandum to the additional collector at Gadchiroli headquarters on Thursday. The memorandum states that they would bring the agitators to the collectorate if government representatives don’t take initiative to meet them at Torgatta, where the tribal of Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh are protesting since March 11.
Adv Lalsu Nogoti, former Zilla Parishad member, said the protest has entered the 26th day but no government officials had so far visited the tribal to know about their grievances. “If the government does not come to the tribal, then we would meet them at the headquarters for our rights,” said Nogoti, who was accompanied by former ZP member Sainu Gota, and his wife Sheila, a former Panchayat Samiti member.