Skip to main content

Total Narmada Dam oustees 53,000, not 23,000, NBA tells Govt of India

By A Representative
Narmada Valley Development and Rehabilitation Minister Surendrasinh Baghel's claim in a press communique that all the 83 rehabilitation sites, built in Madhya Pradesh to resettle Sardar Sarovar Narmada Dam oustees, would be given all the facilities till June 20 to make them liveable "is impossible to achieve", the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) has said in a statement.
Asserting that lack of facilities at rehabilitation sites is a violation of all court orders as also the resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R) law, NBA said, theere was timeframe for providing facilities -- clearing of cases with the the grievance redressal authority by November 28, 2017, allocation of residential plots till December 31, 2018, ownership registration alongside provision of electricity, street lights and cremation grounds till March 31, 2018, and drinking water by April 31, 2018. Yet, till date things have not moved.
According to NBA, the displaced persons were to be compensated in full measure in cash, but even the list of those who are entitled to it is not complete. As many as 16,000 dam oustees have been disqualified from getting the facility because of "unscientific" calculation of the backwater levels of the areas going into submergence.
At 138.68 metres, said NBA, if calculated as once in 100 years submergence due to floods (which came in the 1970s), as many as 30,000 oustees remain to be resettled. The total number of the dam affected persons is not 23,000 but 53,000, as claimed. Meanwhile, 8,000 applications of displaced persons are pending before the authorities.

Comments

TRENDING

Gujarat Sachivalaya blacklists, denies entry to woman social activist: Will NHRC probe?

By Kantilal Parmar*  I have approached the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) seeking an independent, impartial, and transparent investigation into a serious incident that took place at the Gujarat Secretariat in Gandhinagar on August 18, 2026. The matter concerns social activist and women’s rights leader Chandrikaben Solanki, who, according to the information available to me, was denied an entry pass to the Secretariat when she went there to meet Gujarat’s Social Justice and Empowerment Minister, Dr. Manishaben Vakil, to raise an issue concerning social justice.

Ample evidence of child labour in South Gujarat's cash rich sugarcane belt: Study

By Rajiv Shah A recent German government-funded study , undertaken jointly by the NGO Prayas Centre for Labour Research and Action and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, which mainly deals examines the working conditions of migrant workers in the cash-rich sugarcane zone of South Gujarat, has gone a long way to suggest large scale prevalence of child labour during the harvesting season.

Census 2026: Counting citizens or collecting their entire digital identity?

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  The new census format is out, and rather than accepting the demand for a caste census, the government has introduced a 40-question format for the upcoming census exercise. One wonders how long this exercise will take and whether the officials engaged in it will actually be able to complete it on time.