The anti-GAIL pipeline action committee has decided to intensify its ongoing agitation in Kozhikode district against the laying of the Kochi-Mangaluru pipeline for distribution of natural gas.
At a meeting at Mukkom here on Tuesday evening, committee leaders said they were dissatisfied with the formulae worked out by the government during the talks chaired by Industries Minister A.C. Moideen at the Kozhikode Collectorate on Monday.
“The government had violated one of the primary agreements reached at the meeting by registering fresh cases against the protesters on Tuesday. The district court has released 21 persons on bail against whom the police had registered cases in connection with the incidents at Mukkom last week. However, new cases were registered against 10 of them and they were arrested. This was unheard of in the State,” C.P. Cheriya Mohammed, an action committee leader, said.
Besides, he said the committee refused to buy the government argument that the proposed alignment cannot be changed. “We have no choice but go ahead with the protest. How can the pipeline pass through densely populated regions? Are they giving us adequate compensation for our land used for the project,” he asked.
The action committee will chalk out the protest plan against the State government and GAIL with the support all parties, except the CPI(M). Already UDF leaders had thrown their weight behind the agitation.
Unresolved issues
On Monday itself, the action committee leaders had opposed the government rehabilitation conditions for the affected families. The two key contentious issues of shifting the alignment of the pipeline and determining the price of the land acquired for the pipeline route remained unsolved.
The government had decided to offer a special rehabilitation package only for the families who will lose their houses and those who have purchased less than 10 cents of land for constructing houses.
