Anti-Kudankulam project villagers to ban poll campaigns

Residents of Idinthakarai village in Tamil Nadu, who are opposed to the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), have decided not to allow any party to campaign in their village.

The rule will also apply to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has roped in S P Udayakumar, convenor of People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) - the NGO spearheading the anti-KNPP protesters.

"The villagers' committee have decided not to allow any political representatives from outside to campaign inside the village. We have no objection to political leaders meeting the church administration. This will also apply to AAP," said village leader S R J Augustin,

Reports quoting Augustin said the village had decided not to make any concession in the case of AAP, in an effort to treat all political parties equally.

Fishermen from Idinthakarai, which is a 15-20-minute drive from Kudankulam, have been protesting against the plant for the past 960 days. The controversy-ridden plant is located on the shores of Kudankulam village in Tirunelveli district, around 700 km from Chennai.

Udayakumar along with 500 supporters joined AAP last month and is likely to contest on AAP ticket from the nearby Kanyakumari Lok Sabha constituency, which elected a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) candidate in the 2009 Lok Sabha election.

Kanyakumari, which has literacy rate of 92.14 per cent - the highest in Tamil Nadu - was formed after the delimitation in 2008 by merging Kanyakumari Assembly segment from the erstwhile Tiruchendur constituency with the erstwhile Nagercoil constituency.

This also happens to be one of the strongest constituencies of the Congress. The party was elected 13 times out of 16 elections.

In 1999, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managed to win, while the Communist Party of India (Marxist) won in 2004 and DMK in 2009.

Besides Udayakumar, M P Jesurajan and Peter Milton were among the other prominent anti-nuclear activists who joined AAP, while Pushparayan and Mugilan, two other PMANE leaders, have decided not to join AAP.

In December 2013, AAP leader and lawyer Prashant Bhushan visited the village to express solidarity with the villagers' protest against the Kudankulam plant. At that time, he had said his party would extend its support to the protesters.