CM lays stone of Jindal school at Almora village

BD Kasniyal

Pithoragarh, October 23

Amid opposition by villagers and a political group, Chief Minister Harish Rawat today laid the foundation stone of a residential school to be constructed and owned by the Jindal group, a leading corporate group of the country, at Nainisar village, near Almora. The government has classified Nainisar village as deserted.

“The police detained about 24 political workers of the Uttarakhand Parivartan Party (UPP), besides 38 residents of Nainisar village, and confined them to the guest house of GB Pant Institute when they were going to oppose the stone laying ceremony of the school,” said PC Tiwari, president of the UPP at Almora. The government has allegedly given over 15 acres in Nainisar village to the Jindal group for building the school without consulting the villagers.

The Chief Minister, while laying the stone for the school building, said Nainisar was the first village which would be developed under the government’s eco tourism development project to attract tourists through an international residential school complex. Villagers would be given easy loans and subsidy to develop the home stay facility at their houses in the coming years. “We have selected nine uninhabited villages in nine hill districts of the state for developing tourist facilities to encourage natives to return to their villages and start the home stay business for their livelihood,” he said.

However, Tiwari criticized the government for giving valuable village land to a private party in the name of creating jobs. He said the Chief Minister had given valuable land to a corporate house even before the lease papers were complete.

“This reveals the real face of the Chief Minister, who talks about growing manduwa, jhangora and other traditional crops to sustain the hill villages only to befool local residents. Actually, the government is trying to facilitate corporate houses by giving a large chunk of abandoned land in hill villages to them,” said Tiwari.