Farmers stonewall SEZs in M’rashtra

GEETA NAIR &NANDA KASABE
Posted online: Saturday, October 07, 2006 at 0055 hours IST




PUNE BUREAU, OCT 6: The proposed mega SEZ projects in Pune district by
Bharat Forge Ltd, the Kalyani Group at Khed and by the Mahindra and
Mahindra Group at Karla are heading for trouble. Farmers are on the
warpath against the acquisition of their land by the MIDC.
A rally by farmers demanding the scrapping of these SEZ projects was
held in Pune on Friday. Medha Patkar led the rally and said the farmers
would not give up their land for these projects and that their right to
live was being challenged. The SEZ Virodhi Sangharsh Samiti has demanded
that all the land acquisition work be stopped immediately as the
government was forcibly acquiring land. The Samiti also said that
fertile lands were being taken away in the name of development.

“The farmers of Maan village, near the Hinjewadi IT Park in Pune, who
thwarted the forcible acquisition of their land by the MIDC have shown
the way ahead,” Patkar said. She urged farmers from Karla and the
villages in Khed taluka, near Rajgurunagar, to be prepared for a long
battle ahead. The Rajgurunagar police arrested activists from the Khed
villages for participating in anti-SEZ rally.

Bharat Forge Ltd (BFL), signed a MoU with the government of Maharashtra
to jointly develop a multi-product SEZ in the Khed taluka of Pune district.

Govt flouts promise, preys on arable land: Villagers

Government claims of not touching fertile lands for SEZs do not match
the ground realities. Following Sonia Gandhi’s diktat, Maharashtra’s
chief minister (CM) had said that only single crop lands and wastelands
would be acquired by the government and that no fertile would be made
available for SEZs. Maharashtra finance minister, Jayant Patil, feigned
ignorance about agricultural land being acquired for SEZs.

However, farmers in Karla and Khed have another story. Take for
instance, villages near Ranjangaon in Khed that are to be acquired for
the BFL project. Fritolay, a Pepsico company, that manufactures Lay’s
and Uncle Chips Potato chips procures more than 45,000 metric tons of
potatoes annually. “The company engages more than 3,500 farmers in
Maharashtra through its contract farming initiative,” Manu Anand, MD,
FritoLay India had said in a media interaction. Of this 1,800 farmers
come from Pune— Rajgururnagar, Ambegaon and Shirur and Nashik (Sinner),
covering under 2000 acres.

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