A public hearing organised by the administration on Saturday to elicit opinion on a proposal for bauxite and clay mining at Kadaladipara in Kinanoor-Karindalam grama panchayat in Kasaragod was called off after residents of the locality picketed the block panchayat office here.
Around 3,000 protesters, the majority of them women, under the aegis of an action council, Sarvakakshi Janakeeya Samithi, staged a protest at the block panchayat office where the hearing to be chaired by Collector K. Jeevanbabu was scheduled for 10.30 a.m. Protest has been mounting against the move to lease out over 200 acres at Kadaladipara to Ashapura Mining, a private firm based in Mumbai.
The residents began trickling onto the panchayat office premises as early as 7 a.m. The Collector and other officials reached the venue on time.
Mr. Jeevanbabu said the decision to conduct the hearing was taken on the strength of a Kerala High Court directive. He called upon the protesters to register their views. However, they refused to oblige the Collector, who later called off the hearing.
Inaugurating a public meeting on the Neeleswaram-Chittarikal road, president of the Kinanoor-Karindalam panchayat A.Vidhubala said the mining operations in the densely populated locality would have serious ecological implications.
“There is no question of a rethink on the issue as the local people staged similar protests at Thalayadukkam here to stall the clay and bauxite mining activities by Kerala Clays and Ceramics Ltd in 2015. The public sector company was found transporting roughly 200 truckloads of raw materials a day,” the CPI(M) leader said.
The company had initially maintained that it was ferrying the mined materials to the State-owned Malabar Cements but was later found to be diverting the products to private firms based in Hyderabad, she alleged.
Panchayat vice president V. Balakrishnan, Congress leader K.K. Narayanan, BJP leader K. Rajan, and CPI leader P.P. Babu besides representatives of various local bodies addressed the gathering.
