New Delhi, May 8
Expressing shock at the Supreme Court’s refusal to grant stay against the ongoing construction work to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam from 110 m to 121.92 m, Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader Medha Patkar today said they were now left with no other alternative but to launch a “fight to the finish”.
Terming the court’s decision “against the rights of oustees who are protected by Article 21 of the Constitution”, the NBA leader told mediapersons that “the dam will devastate 35,000 and more families. This has become a death sentence for the most ancient valley and civilisation”.
“The verdict shows an anti-poor perspective. Development will now have not only an inhuman but also a brutal face and force. Even when it became clear to every committee that visited the valley that injustice was being done and records and reports were flawed, the court did not take the responsible task of investigation into the jumbling of not just figures, but of families in thousands, nor a timely conclusion,” she added.
“If this is the response by the system, we will have no alternative but to take the issue by its horns now,” she said, adding that the NBA’s next move would now be to go back to the valley and launch a “fight to the finish”.
“ We cannot let the 35,000 people die,” she said. Coming down heavily on the UPA government, she said it proved to be in alliance with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s violent ways and means and not Gandhi’s “Antyodaya”.
“ The UPA government has decided and conveyed to the country that in this globalised, liberalised era, development decisions will be made by multinationals to the corporate interests with political distortion of the truth and not mass-rooted democracy or the scientific or rational analysis of social, environmental and economic conditions.
