MP govt asks 'Jal Satyagraha' protestors to accept land

The Madhya Pradesh government today asked the farmers, participating in the 'Jal Satyagraha', to call off their protest and accept the land being allotted to them.
The 'Jal Satyagraha' protest, in which farmers are standing in waist-deep water of river Narmada in the state's Khandwa district against raising of the Omkareshwar dam's water level due to which their land was submerged, and seeking rehabilitation of those affected by it, entered the 31st day today.
"The MP government has 5,000 hectares of cultivable certified land for allotment to the agitating oustees of Omkareshwar dam," Principal Secretary, Narmada Valley Development Authority, Rajneesh Vaish told PTI today.

All the agitating 213 oustees have already been allotted two hectares of land each from this land bank, but they are not willing to take it, Vaish said.
The government has also identified another 350 hectares of cultivable land on the banks of Narmada river for them. They should come forward and accept it, he said.
However, the Aam Aadmi Party, which along with the Narmada Bachao Andolan, is supporting the Jal Satyagraha, alleged that the state government is providing barren land to the farmers against their cultivable land.

"The land that has been shown to the oustees in Narsinghpur is barren. We can't accept it at any cost," AAP Khandwa zone secretary Daljeet Singh Khanuja told PTI over phone.

The oustees are standing in the water and have developed skin ailments, he said.
Khanuja also said that the woes of the oustees have multiplied with the government raising the water level of the Omkareshwar dam from 189 metres to 191 metres.
The AAP, which has decided to intensity the stir, is sending its national spokesperson Sanjay Singh to the agitation site at Goghalgaun village tomorrow where he is scheduled to address a Kisan-Mazdoor (farmer-labourers) convention.
Omkareshwar project has come up for hydel power production and enhancing irrigation facility in the Khandwa region.