Former Jharkhand chief minister and JVM chief Babulal Marandi, who had been heading a weeklong agitation of thousands of tribal people against a coalmining company in Pakur, on Thursday signalled the end of the agitation after the firm agreed for a dialogue.
The offer for a dialogue from the management of the Panem Coal Mines Limited, a joint venture of the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) and the EMTA group of companies, came after Mr Marandi threatened a daylong economic blockade across Santhal Pargana that would have severely affected coal supply to the PSEB power plants. But the JVM-spurred coal-rake blockade for the past two days affected transportation of minerals from the region.
Panem CEO-cum-director Vikash Mukherjee and senior project director N.C. Mukherjee met Mr Marandi and urged him to set up a committee of the displaced villagers for a dialogue about the company’s incomplete welfare work promised during an agreement signed in November 2006. Company officials later said they were hopeful of the current bitterness to end shortly with the beginning of a dialogue process.
Jharkhand’s former deputy chief minister Stephen Marandi of the Congress, who was one of the signatories of a tripartite agreement with the state government, Panem and the Raj Mahal Pahar Bacchao Samiti for completion of all promised welfare projects by the company, had also been sitting in dharna along with Congress leader Furkan Ansari.
Mr Marandi began his dharna along with thousands of local tribal people on Friday after reaching Pachuwara in Pakur district to observe the first death anniversary of Sister Valsa John, a 53-year-old Kerala-origin nun and social worker who was brutally murdered at her home there on November 15 2011. “If the company agrees to all the demands of the Samiti, we will not call Jharkhand bandh,” said Mr Marandi, who has also shot off letters to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar seeking a CBI probe and CAG audit of the mining company. JVM MP Ajay Kumar on Thursday met Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde to ask him for a CBI probe into Panem’s operations in Pakur.