Sena, BJP spar over Nanar refinery, 4 days after tie-up

Thousands of farmers have refused to surrender land to make space for the refinery, fearing it could pollute the area and harm the region’s agriculture. Earlier this week, Sena leaders mounted pressure on Fadnavis to scrap the project

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena may have finally decided to fight the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections together, but one issue that the parties have constantly bickered over in the past year has come back to haunt the alliance.

The Sena has been opposed to the government acquiring land from villagers in Ratnagiri’s Nanar to build a multi-billion dollar oil refinery. Moving the oil refinery out of Nanar was among the Sena’s conditions to join the alliance (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT Photo)

The Sena has been opposed to the government acquiring land from villagers in Ratnagiri’s Nanar to build a multi-billion dollar oil refinery. Moving the oil refinery out of Nanar was among the Sena’s conditions to join the alliance. While chief minister Devendra Fadnavis promised to shift the refinery out, on Wednesday, a former BJP MLA and leader from the Konkan region, Pramod Jathar, opposed it saying the refinery would generate jobs for at least 1.5 lakh people. “The project is a boon to the Konkan, which has been struggling with unemployment,” Jathar said. “The state government should find out just how many people are against the project and announce a compensation package accordingly,” he said.

Thousands of farmers have refused to surrender land to make space for the refinery, fearing it could pollute the area and harm the region’s agriculture. Earlier this week, Sena leaders mounted pressure on Fadnavis to scrap the project. However, so far, no action has been taken to cancel the land acquisition notification for the project.

Sena leader and state industries minister, Subhash Desai, said his department has already initiated the process to denotify the land acquisition. “There is no technical or bureaucratic procedure involved now; the chief minister has to sign the file to denotify it,” Desai said. BJP leaders said Jathar has the support of some people in the party as the BJP feels it has been arm-twisted into cancelling the project.