Anti-nuke protesters who gathered at Idinthakarai in Tamil Nadu on Sunday set October 11 as the deadline for the central government to completely halt work at the Koodankulam nuclear power project site. The protesters have decided to continue their fast till that date.
As many as 7,000 people from several coastal villages, who had gathered for the token fast on Sunday morning, listened with keen interest to the details of the meeting the members of the committee of the protest movement had with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on October 7.
The committee members, led by the coordinator S.P. Uthayakumar, had a two-hour consultation meeting in which it was resolved that work of all kind, including the general maintenance activities at the nuclear power plant, should be completely stopped before October 11 in line with the Cabinet decision of the state government.
The protest committee also sought the government’s intervention to ensure complete suspension of the work and decided to continue the fast until October 11 when the next course of action would be decided.
Meanwhile, the Tamil Nadu state Congress committee president, K.V. Thangkabalu, told reporters in Thoothukudi that the construction work at the site had already been stopped though it was not technically feasible to halt the maintenance work.