Four officials taken hostage by Indian anti-hydro-project villagers

June 22, 2011
Four gov­ern­ment func­tionar­ies asso­ci­at­ed with a mega hydropow­er project in Himachal Pradesh’s Kin­naur dis­trict [India] were tak­en hostage by vil­lagers protest­ing over envi­ron­men­tal issues and released after a day in cap­tiv­i­ty Wednes­day, offi­cials said.

June 22, 2011
Four gov­ern­ment func­tionar­ies asso­ci­at­ed with a mega hydropow­er project in Himachal Pradesh’s Kin­naur dis­trict [India] were tak­en hostage by vil­lagers protest­ing over envi­ron­men­tal issues and released after a day in cap­tiv­i­ty Wednes­day, offi­cials said.

The pro­test­ers were demand­ing accep­tance of their demands by state-run Himachal Pradesh Pow­er Cor­po­ra­tion Lim­it­ed (HPPCL) exe­cut­ing a mega run-of-the-riv­er hydropow­er project on a Satluj trib­u­tary.

“All the four gov­ern­ment func­tionar­ies, includ­ing three senior offi­cials of the HPPCL who were kept under house arrest by vil­lagers since Tues­day, were released on the HPPCL’s assur­ance that most of their demands would be accept­ed,” Sub-Divi­sion­al Mag­is­trate Naresh Thakur told IANS over phone.

He said the vil­lagers demands includ­ed grant of con­struc­tion con­tracts to locals and steps to pre­vent dete­ri­o­ra­tion of envi­ron­ment.

The project of 130 MW is called Kashang hydropow­er project. It is being made on Kashang rivulet, some 275 km from state cap­i­tal Shim­la, and is being fund­ed by the Asian Devel­op­ment Bank.

HPPCL Gen­er­al Man­ag­er S.P. Gup­ta said the released hostages includ­ed project’s Exec­u­tive Engi­neer C.L. Dhi­man along with a senior research fel­low of the Himachal Pradesh Uni­ver­si­ty. They had been kept in cap­tiv­i­ty at the ‘pan­chay­at ghar’ in Pan­gi vil­lage, the sec­ond largest in the dis­trict with a pop­u­la­tion of over 2,500 peo­ple.

The min­istry of envi­ron­ment and forests has already grant­ed an envi­ron­men­tal clear­ance to the project.