Thamizhaga Cauvery Vivasayigal Sangam has announced that it would mobilise farmers to embark on a movement against giving their lands to stall the proposed hydrocarbon exploration project at Periyakudi and other areas in Tiruvarur district.
A resolution to this effect was passed at an urgent meeting of the association, chaired by its general secretary P.R. Pandian, at Vikirapandiyam in Kottur block on April 25 where it was pointed that recently the Madras High Court had indicted the governments for acquiring agricultural lands “without obtaining the consent of farmers” for implementing the projects such as Chennai-Salem Expressway and installation of high tension power transmission towers through agricultural lands in Salem by endorsing provisions in the Land Acquisition Act that no land should be acquired without the consent of farmers.
The meeting decided to organise a movement against land acquisition in Periyakudi, Vikirapandiyam, Irulneekki, Kottur and other villages where the Union government had permitted hydrocarbon exploration. Farmers would be encouraged to take a pledge that they would not part with their lands for implementing the hydrocarbon project in the delta region.
The association also urged the governments to drop the hydrocarbon exploration project in the interest of posterity as extraction of hydrocarbon from 40 places would render the region unfit for human habitation and cultivation. The project would not only affect fertile agricultural lands but also destroy groundwater table, a much needed source to be protected under the present environmental conditions. It would only result in mass migration of people to other parts of the country as refugees, it said.
In another resolution, the association called upon the Tamil Nadu government not to dilute the firm stand taken by former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, of not allowing such projects in Tamil Nadu.
