Deve Gowda joins farmers’ protest against land acquisition
By IANSThursday, January 7, 2010
BANGALORE - Janata Dal-Secular chief and former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda Thursday threatened a state-wide agitation against Karnataka’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government if it continued to acquire farm land for industry and infrastructure purposes.
“It is a do or die situation in the state as farmers are being arrested, beaten up and their lands acquired without their consent,” Gowda told reporters here.
He also met Governor H.R. Bhardwaj with his complaint against the government’s treatment of farmers.
Later he joined farmers at Hemmigepura on Bangalore’s outskirts and squatted with them on the Bangalore-Mysore expressway, coming up as part of the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor (BMIC).
Gowda has been waging a long battle over the quantum of land granted for promoters of BMIC, the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises Ltd, formed by Kalyani Group of Companies and SAB International Ltd.
Incidentally, Gowda had cleared the project in 1995.
Apart from a four-lane highway, which can be expanded to six lanes, the project envisages building five integrated townships for a population of 100,000 each, a corporate centre, a commercial centre, a heritage centre and an eco-tourism centre along its 111 km length.
Gowda told reporters at the protest venue: “From today, I will sit in dharna along with farmers. I will continue the agitation. Let the government arrest me.
“This is the most uncivilised government the state ever had. We can tolerate it no more.”
Farmers in Dharwad in north Karnataka and Davangere in the central part of the state have been staging protests for several days against acquisition of their land.
The government was embarrassed Wednesday when police handcuffed a few farmers in Dharwad while taking them to jail. Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa ordered suspension of three policemen for the incident.
He also assured farmers that their lands would not be acquired without their consent.
While farmers in Davangere and Dharwad called off the agitation, protest against land acquisition for the BMIC continued Thursday.
