Arrest PPSS chief Abhaya Sahu, demands Kharabela

BHUBANESWAR: Utkal Bharat Party president Kharabela Swain on Wednesday demanded immediate arrest of Abhaya Sahu, president of Posco Protirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS) and his supporters for encouraging encroachment of Government land and derailing industrialisation of the State.“Encroachment of Government land is a criminal activity and those encouragingsuch illegal action should be taken to task. The Left leaders from West Bengaland civil society activists including Medha Patkar should not be spared,” he said at a media conference here. Justifying Government’s action to free its land from the clutches of the encroachers, Swain said there cannot be two sets of laws. If the Government failed to evict unauthorised occupants in Dhinkia, it has no right to evict encroachers of Government land elsewhere, he said.Accusing the Left parties of double standards on industrialisation, the formerMP said they had one stand in West Bengal and another in Orissa. In Singur andNandigram, private lands were forcibly taken away from the farmers for theTata’s Nano project. A few days back, the Left Front opposed the Bill by theTrinamool Congress Government to return the land to the original owners by staging a walkout in West Bengal Assembly. Now these forces are supporting people who have unauthorisedly occupied Government lands at Dhinkia and Gobindpur. Outside forces have taken the upper hand and succeeded in stalling the largest ever foreign direct investment (FDI) in the country due to weak leadership of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who has not visited the Posco site even once in the last six years. The Congress is behaving in the most opportunistic manner by not making its stand clear on the Posco project. The BJP has no clear-cut industrial policy and the party has become irrelevantafter BJD snapped ties with it, he added.