Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders of the kadmal unit resigned in mass, in Madhya Pradesh in protest of arrest of Narmada Bachao Andolan (NDA) leader Medha Patkar after allegedely “framing her in false charges”. Patkar for years, is fighting for those living along the river Narmada and facing inundation due to increased height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam.
They said that instead of saving and rehabilitating the people facing inundation, the administration was busy threatening them and resorting to other coercive measures to vacate the area. A press release issued by the Andolan on Friday said that use of force and police excesses were in full play in the Narmada valley region.
The NBA activists, together with the people displaced in the region, held several meetings in Kukshi and Manawar tehsils, Adivasi-majority Sondul Patti and a number of villages in Barwani district. In these meetings, people said the administration was pressuring them to vacate their villages and that if they failed to do so, the authorities threatening that they would lodge false against them and send to jail, the release said. It also claimed that false cases had been filed against Patkar, due to which she had been in Dhar jail for the last nine days.