The Orissa government on Saturday declared the road blockade at Dhinkia, a major part of the Posco steel project site, by the local people as illegal — thus signalling a possible swoop on the protesters at any moment to clear the hurdles for land acquisition.
Enraged at the police move, senior leaders of five political parties — CPI, CPI (M), Forward Bloc, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party — led by Jagatsinghpur Lok Sabha member Bibhu Prasad Tarai rushed to the spot to express their solidarity with the protesters. According to latest reports, the leaders were sitting on a dharna at Dhinka demanding immediate pullout of police forces from the project area.
At least 20 platoons of police forces have been sent to the project area to “assist” the district administration to acquire land.
Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS),which has been opposing the `52,000 crores steel project alleged, that the police forces were threatening to enter the project site forcibly. With the administration taking a belligerent posture and the local people refusing to relent from their protest, the situation appeared quite volatile.Over a 100 children are being used by PPSS as human shields to halt the ongoing land acquisition process. The children were seen lying face down in agricultural lands in the hot sun with armed police standing in front of them.
“My father was killed by Posco supporters earlier. The elders have been doing this agitation for six years but the state government did not listen. So now we are taking the lead with a hope that the government listen to us. The police just cannot terrorise us,” Nirupama Mandal, a schoolgirl hailing from Dhinkia village, said.
Tushar and Susant, two school boys who were also seen lying on their agriculture fields in protest, said, “Let the government kill us before entering our village. We will not so easily allow the government to come and take our land,” they said.
The police personnel who had retreated on Friday after a five-hour face-off were redeployed on Saturday morning.
The district collector N.C. Jena and the superintendent of police S.D. Singh were present on the scene, asking the children and protesting farmers to retreat and allow the acquisition process to go on. “The children are being used as shields by the protesters which is illegal. The child rights act is violated. They are not allowing government officials and even villagers who have their land in that area to enter. So we are trying to pursue them not to take law into their own hands,” said the SP.