Daijiworld Media Network – Mangalore (NR)
 
Mangalore, Feb 4: A team of experts from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) came for site inspection and survey of the lands to be taken over under MSEZ (Mangalore Special Economic Zone), here on Sunday February.3.   

Residents of various villages surprisingly gave a very warm welcome and were at their hospitable best to the team. For instance in Thenka Yekkar village, the villagers offered the team coconut water with one of the elderly villagers remarking that the sweet coconut water he was offering was from the same land that the MSEZ officials had considered as barren. However, one of the team members assured him that they had in fact come here to verify the claim.  

The technical team of the expert committee for Infrastructure Development and Miscellaneous project of MoEF was headed by chairman R P Garg. Garg and the team visited the sites of Thenka Yekkar, Delantha Bettu, Kuthethoor, Permude, Bala and surrounding areas which are earmarked for the MSEZ project. Their main objective was to look into the veracity of claims put forth by the various organizations, significant among which was the fact that fertile agricultural land was being acquired for the MSEZ project.
 
Some villagers proudly showed the team rare medicinal herbs and plants, some showed the officials a project where the school children had collected the feathers of peacocks, jungle fowl and porcupine nettles. All of which will disappear if the SEZ comes here, they rued.
 
The next task before the Committee was to find out whether the said lands were agricultural or dry land and would the villagers sell their land if the price fixed for the land was doubled.  There seemed to be near unanimous opposition amongst the landowners not only to the land acquisition process but several of them even went to the extent of expressing their willingness to commit suicide if their land was taken over.   
 
In Delantha Bettu, where the officials visited the Kodamanitaya temple, which is well-known for medicinal properties of a fresh water spring, the temple priest Shetty informed that this was the temple of a village deity and people from all faiths and castes worshipped there. He lamented that the temple spring has become polluted due to the industrialization taking place since the past decade. The officials traversed on rough terrain and visited several dozen of remotest farms situated within deep valleys of the region.
 
Everywhere the officials came across farmers voicing their opposition to the proposed petrochemical project. Appi Poojarithi (75) of Manjalakodi Kuthethoor, cried out “Give us poison before you acquire our land, so that we could atleast die in peace instead of living without our land." However, the officials displayed their sensitivity and patiently heard Poojarii who told them that she and her son Shivarama Poojari eked a living by working in their 15 acres of green land.
 
As per latest statistics the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board (KIADB) has already acquired for the MSEZ around 1,800 acres of land. In the second phase the KIADB has to take over around 2,035 acres of land in the region. After completing their survey and inspection of villages the officials then proceeded to Chelaru village where displaced persons of MRPL project had been rehabilitated to study their living conditions.