Jaitapur on fire; Patil orders enquiry

The renewed farmers’ protest over the Jaitapur nuclear power plant took a violent turn on Tuesday with Shiv Sena calling for a shutdown across Ratnagiri district to condemn police firing on anti-nuclear power project demonstrators.

On Monday, around 600 people from Sakhrinate village demonstrated against the power plant and allegedly attacked the local police station. The police said they had to open fire in self-defence. A man identified was Tavrez Sejkar was killed in the firing.

Reacting to the incident, the mob vandalized a district hospital and breaking furniture and glasses at the port-mortem wing on Tuesday.

They also set fire on state buses and other vehicles, said the police.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra Home Minister R R Patil has announced magisterial enquiry into Jaitapur firing.

Opposition Shiv Sena slammed the ruling Democratic Front (DF) government for allegedly failing to deal with the situation.

Leader of Opposition in legislative Assembly Eknath Khadse demanded a judicial probe into Monday?s firing, while Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray said it?s ?pay time? for the DF government.

“It is time for chief minister Prithviraj Chavan to pack up and go home,” Thackeray said.

Defending its ally, the Congress party said the agitation is being fuelled by vested interests.

“The death of a person in police firing or otherwise is always regrettable and no party sensitive towards peoples’s aspirations will ever condone it. But what has to be seen is whether the agitation was based on some real concerns or completely imaginery concerns are being stoked by vested interests,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari told reporters Tuesday evening.

Union Environment minister Jairam Ramesh too had slammed Shiv Sena for ?politicising? the issue.

“Shiv Sena has a long track record of politicising all issues. This is the same Shiv Sena, which had vowed to throw the Enron project into the Arabian Sea in 1993, if I recall right. But when they came to power in 1995, they went out of their way to give approval,” said Ramesh.

Ramesh had earlier defended the ?go-ahead? given to the project and said it is not an ?environmental concern?.

?The plant is not an environmental concern. As far as environment clearance is concerned, we have done all that is required and all different interest groups should not use environment as a shield behind which they start firing their guns at government,” Ramesh had told reporters in New Delhi.

“On November 28, the Environment clearance for Jaitapur nuclear power project was accorded. The 35 conditions associated with the clearance have also been made public,” he had said.

The renewed protest is accentuated by an Impact Assessment Report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) that flayed the setting up of the nuclear power plant at Jaitapur in the Konkan region.

According to the report, the project, spreading over about 968 hectares of land spanning five villages, will have a huge negative impact on the social as well as environmental development of not just these villages and the surrounding areas but the Konkan region in general.

The report also alleged that the government subverted facts and called fertile agricultural land barren. It also indicated that the Jaitapur project is sitting on a high to moderate severity earthquake zone.

The Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project (JNPP) is located in the ecologically sensitive coastal Maharashtra region which includes Raigad, Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri districts.

The JNPP comprises six EPRs each of 1650 MW, proposed to be set up in a phased manner in twin unit construction mode over a period of 15-17 years by Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) in technical collaboration with Areva, France at Madban villagei.

The first EPR unit at Jaitapur is expected to start generating electricity within seven years from now.

On Dec 6, a pact was signed between India and France signalling the go-ahead to the Jaitapur nuclear plant in Maharashtra with the help of Areva-built reactors despite local protests over the unit in the western state.