E-Paper
Protests, sloganeering mar IFFI inaugural
Four protesters who were in the auditorium disrupted the minister’s speech, shouting “Javadekar go back” and “Save Mahadayi,” in denunciation of the Centre giving the green signal to the Karnataka government for the diversion of the interstate river Mahadayi.
Protests marred the first day of the golden jubilee celebration of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) on Wednesday with minister of information and broadcasting Prakash Javadekar greeted by slogan-chanting hecklers as he began his speech at the inaugural ceremony.
Four protesters who were in the auditorium disrupted the minister’s speech, shouting “Javadekar go back” and “Save Mahadayi,” in denunciation of the Centre giving the green signal to the Karnataka government for the diversion of the interstate river Mahadayi. Javadekar also oversees the Union environment ministry, which cleared the Karnataka proposal.
Security staff and police took the protestors into custody and detained them under preventive sections.
Protests were also staged outside the Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee stadium on the outskirts of the state capital Panaji as well as the main IFFI venue i where protesters were detained for violating section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure that bans public assembly of more than four people. The section has been invoked ostensibly to maintain peace on account of the Ayodhya verdict.
Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant sought to brush aside the protests. “There were some who were raising slogans. I could not hear them clearly and could not understand what they were trying to say. Their message didn’t get across. Maybe they were raising their personal grievances,” Sawant said at the conclusion of the function.
Earlier in the day, in a bid to stymie any protests, Goa police sent notices to several political leaders including the state president of the Congress party warning him to “desist from getting involved in a cognizable offence.” Javadekar also held a last-minute meeting with activists from Goa to ask them to call off their protests.
Goa is locked in a 15 year battle with Karnataka over the waters of the River Mahadayi, a river that originates in the Western Ghats in North Karnataka and flows into Goa. Karnataka seeks to divert the water to the west-flowing Malaprabha river.
The Union environment ministry, in a letter to the Karnataka government on October 17, noted that the scheme “doesn’t envisage creating new command area or providing water to suffering existing command areas for irrigation. Also the project doesn’t involve hydroelectric power generation [and] is purely a drinking water supply scheme and [hence] does not attract the provisions of the EIA {Environmental Impact Assessment} notification 2006 and its subsequent amendments.”
Goa contested the decision stating that Karnataka had misled the ministry by claiming that the Khalsa-Banduri Dam is a solely a drinking water project. An all- party delegation which met Javadekar on November 4, protested against a letter by the ministry which granted Karnataka the green signal to construct a river diversion project and demanded the letter be withdrawn.
On Tuesday, Javadekar wrote to Sawant promising to set up a committee to look into the issues raised by Goa in detail. Activists in Goa termed the letter an “eyewash.”
