Indian Tribal News Service
Gandhinagar
After they hit tribal-dominated Dahod by holding big adivasi rallies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi are set to address public meetings in the Vansda constituency of Navsari district on June 10 and 12, respectively. South Gujarat comprises five districts of Surat, Tapi, Navsari, Valsad and Dang.
Modi will address a public meeting at Khudvel village and Rahul at Charanwada village, just two kilometre away from Vansda town. The meetings assume significance since a section of the tribals of the region, led by Congress MLA from Vansda Anant Patel, was against the Government’s Damanganga-Par-Tapi-Narmada River linkage project. The Government abandoned the project and the BJP has now put its entire machinery to undo the damage to its poll prospects in the region.
State BJP president C. R. Paatil, who is the MP from Navsari, has asserted over 4.5 lakh people will attend Modi’s rally to make it a historical event in terms of the highest number of people attending a programme. For its part, the Congress said over 1.5 lakh people will attend Rahul’s rally.
A total of 27 Assembly seats are reserved for tribals in Gujarat. The Congress won 15 of them in 2017 while the BJP got nine seats. The Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP), which contested in alliance with the Congress, won two seats. This time round, the BTP has aligned with new entrant AAP. An independent bagged the Modhwa Hadaf constituency in Panchmahals district. A series of defections in the last five years now have put both the Congress and the BJP with 12 seats apiece..
Modi and Rahul’s rallies earlier were in Dahod, which is among the five districts of eastern Gujarat with the four others being Mahisagar, Vadodara, Chhota Udepur and Panchmahal.
At Navsari, Modi will inaugurate a medical college in the district and also lay the foundation stones of different development projects.
Tribal leaders were protesting against the river linking project fearing possible displacement of thousands of people in the tribal-dominated areas in South Gujarat. The protests became stronger after Gujarat’s Finance Minister Kanubhai Desai allocated Rs 500 crore with a change in the name of the project. The Dam Hatao, Jungle Bachavo Sangharsh Samiti platform was then created by nearly 200 tribal leaders in Gujarat to protest the river linkage project.
Tribal leaders argued that as per the DPR of the project as many as 37 villages in Dang district would submerge and more than 50,000 people would be displaced. Facing a backlash from the tribals in the crucial poll year, the Government went ahead in announcing the scrapping of the project.
The Damanganga-Par-Tapi-Narmada River linkage project was initiated in 1980 with a view to transfer surplus water that flows into the sea to water deficit regions of Saurashtra and Kutch. Par River which originates from Nashik in Maharashtra flows through Valsad district. River Tapi originates from the State’s only hill station Saputara and flows through Tapi, Dang and Surat district and in the case of Narmada River, it originates from Madhya Pradesh and flows through Maharashtra, Bharuch and Narmada districts in the State.
As per plan, there were to be seven dams as part of the river linking project – one at Nashik in Maharashtra and six others in South Gujarat. Apart from dams, three diversion weirs, two tunnels and a 395-km long canal were being envisaged as part of the project. Out of the total length of canal, nearly 200 km is in the Par-Tapi region. Six power houses were also part of the proposed project. The Rs 10,000 crore plus project was also having provision to provide irrigation water to farmers in South Gujarat region.
Tribal organisations including Adivasi Samanvay Manch, Adivasi Ekta Parishad and Samast Adivasi Samaj openly opposed the project claiming that dams would be constructed as part of river linking project and the entire Vaghai tehsil would be submerged and hundreds of tribal families would be displaced.
