Project-affected farmers stage sit-in protest

Farmers affected by the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited’s (BPCL) inter-State Irugur-Devangonthi pipeline project staged a sit-in protest near the Collectorate here on Monday demanding that the public sector undertaking should realign the project to spare farm lands.

The farmers organised as a collective opposing the BPCL’s multi-product petroleum pipeline project have demanded that the government realign the pipeline that is designed to run through seven districts starting from Irugur (in Coimbatore) to Devangonthi (in Bengaluru). The 294-km petroleum pipeline project had seen opposition from farmers, who stand to lose with the laying of pipelines aligned to run through their cultivable lands. In its wake, farmers of Tiruppur, Erode, Salem, Namakkal, Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri districts have raised objections to various caveats that will making farming difficult.

According to the farmers, the pipeline project forbids cultivation of coconuts, mangoes, and forbids sinking of wells and construction of houses on the plots among others. Further, land owners will have to bear any damage to the pipeline running through their farms, it has been alleged. The protesting farmers have demanded that the BPCL realign the trajectory of the pipeline to enable its passage along the roads and highways and spare the farm lands that is feared to render farmers vulnerable by scuttling cultivation of crops of their choice.