Tension prevailed in the villages where the Naveen Patnaik government is striving to acquire land for the proposed steel plant project of Posco.
In Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district villagers protesting land acquisition clashed with police.
Eight persons, including six women, were injured when police resorted to lathi charge to disperse villagers who came out of their homes to protest tree cutting by the men engaged by the district administration to acquire land near their village.
One of the injured women, Srimati Sethi (38), was admitted to a local hospital, while the other injured were discharged after first-aid.
The authorities, however, claimed that they had not used force upon the agitating villagers, but some protesters were injured when there was a stampede-like situation.
The villagers who have been demanding shifting of the project site from the three gram panchayats of Dhinkia, Gadakujang and Nuagaon to any other location said the administration was making false claims.
The protesters, a majority of them women, protested when a tree was felled in the land adjacent to their village. No project-related work was carried out following the clash.
Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti president Abhay Sahu and convener of Bhitamati Surakya Manch Bhaskar Swain also claimed that male policemen beat up the women.
Soon after the lathi charge, about 600 women blocked a road forcing the police to leave their village.
Meanwhile, more than 60 Dongria Kondh tribal men and women from Lanjigarh area of Kalahandi district visited Gobindpur to express solidarity with the residents of Dhinkia and Gobindpur who have been sitting on a dharna since June 2 to prevent entry of administration officials and police into their village.
President of Azadi Bachao Andolan Banwarilal Sharma also visited the dharna site along with several other activists to extend their support to the agitation being spearheaded by the villagers since 2005.
