Hundreds of farmers from Chinnamanur and nearby by villages laid a siege to the PWD office at Uthamapalayam here on Wednesday demanding permission to desilt Udayar Tank and remove five-decade-old encroachments.
They also launched an ‘indefinite wait’ stir against the PWD officials and sat on the campus since morning condemning a PWD order banning lifting of soil from the tank.
The PWD did not take any effort to desilt the tank and remove massive encroachments. But it prevented farmers from lifting soil without giving any valid reasons. Now, the size of the tank shrank to 28 acres from its original size of 78 acres. Fifty acres of the tank had been encroached upon for the past five decades. With poor storage capacity, hundreds of acres of cultivable land in Chinnamanur and nearby areas remained barren, they said.
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Even as the State Government had already issued a G.O. to renovate tanks and allow farmers to lift alluvial soil, why the PWD officials prevented us from lifting it, asked M. Senguttuvan, State deputy secretary, Tamil Nadu Farmers’ Association.
Collector N. Venkatachalam had advised farmers to lift alluvial soil from tanks. When we lifted soil without waiting for their permission, they rushed to the spot with the police and threatened farmers to stop lifting it, he said.
Moreover, we are tired of giving petitions to the PWD and the revenue officials to remove encroachments, he said.
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Later, the farmers withdrew their agitation as a PWD official Anbu Selvan assured to remove all encroachments and desilt the tank before August 18.
On July 15, farmers in and around Chinnamanur had lifted alluvial soil from Udayar Tank, a major irrigation source for 1,000 acres without waiting for necessary order from PWD officials condemning inordinate delay in granting permission.