Land losers may intensify stir against IOCL

Hundreds of displaced families under the banner of 'Land Loser Labour Welfare Cooperative Society' led by the local MP Bibhu Prasad Tarai, on Monday, staged a demonstration at the site of the oil refinery project of Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) at Paradip.

The agitators threatened to intensify their stir against the refinery project if their ten-point charter of demands is not fulfilled within 15 days.

Sources said, IOCL has not implemented the Rehabilitation and Resettlement policy (R&R) policy-2006 of the Orissa government as it had started work in 2000 in Paradip.

Land losers and displaced families argued that IOCL should implement the R&R policy of the state government.

Even, the Rehabilitation and Peripheral Advisory Committee (RPDAC) meet on the project had decided to rehabilitate land losers and provide compensation to them as per this policy.

Tarai has demanded that the decisions taken at the last meeting of RPDAC on September 29 last year need to be implemented failing which the land losers would paralyze the IOCL machinery. He also demanded that the company needs to build a rehabilitation colony for all the 143 displaced families with health and sanitation facilities as per the R&R policy.

He alleged that IOCL Had acquired land at throwaway prices of Rs 80,000 per acre at a time when other companies like Essar had paid Rs 19.10 lakh per acre to the land losers. IOC has acquired 3,300 hectares of private land for its oil refinery and had paid Rs 49 crore as compensation to the affected families in 17 villages under the Kujang tehsil in Jagatsinghpur district.

The affected families expressed that the contract agency of IOCL is dredging the Jatadhari river mouth, violating the norms and conditions of the Union ministry of water resources and provisions of Central Regulation Zone (CRZ), causing soil erosion and endangering many coastal villages.

They pointed out that the dredging agency has created a lake of saline water near the Jatadhari river mouth due to which the paddy crops in nearby villages are getting affected.