Social activist Medha Patkar, who’s in Hyderabad to attend an occasion by the Nationwide Alliance of Individuals’s Actions (NAPM), was made to return from a home in Chaderghat by police on Monday. Patkar will chair a session on Tuesday on the function of political events and folks’s actions in defending the Structure and democracy.
The 70-year-old environmentalist, identified for main the Narmada Bachao Andolan in Gujarat, made a quiet go to to a fellow activist’s house within the morning. The police requested Patkar to go away the locality, apparently sensing potential pressure within the occasion of her visiting the stretch of the Musi river the place persons are being relocated as a part of a rejuvenation venture much like the Sabarmati venture in Gujarat.
Nonetheless, the police have denied this as the rationale for sending Patkar again. G Shyam Sunder, Assistant Commissioner of Police (Malakpet), instructed indianexpress.com that the activist was despatched again conserving the regulation and order scenario in thoughts.
“If a nationwide chief of her stature is visiting a house within the neighbourhood, not less than the native police have to be told. With out following the protocol of acquiring police permission, how can she be invited to a house right here? What if one thing occurs to her right here? She was dropped at the house as if she was a gully chief,” the ACP stated, denying any connection of the incident to the Musi rejuvenation venture.
Activists related to the NAPM say Patkar’s go to was not a part of any deliberate public motion towards the Musi venture however fairly an impromptu one to fulfill some residents and households dealing with displacement because of the venture.
“The police requested her to not take up a public march or protest at the moment as a result of there isn’t a police permission. She asserted that she has the precise to go to any households or discuss to folks, and affected folks even have a proper to protest if they’re being displaced. She left after finishing her go to,” Kiran Kumar Vissa of the NAPM instructed indianexpress.com.
The Musi rejuvenation venture is likely one of the flagship programmes of the Congress authorities, which got here to energy in December 2023. Together with reviving the lifeless river, the federal government has promised to create a vibrant city public area alongside the river with facilities for recreation, tourism, and business actions. In keeping with the federal government’s plan, about 15,000 households presently residing alongside the 55-km stretch of the river shall be relocated.
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