Itanagar, July 15: Hundreds of residents of Siang, under the banner of the Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum (SIFF), staged a massive protest on Monday in Upper Siang, Arunachal Pradesh, demanding the scrapping of the 11,500 MW Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP).
The protest was held in response to reports of a meeting scheduled for late Tuesday in New Delhi, to be chaired by P.K. Mishra, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The agenda of the meeting includes reviewing progress at the pre-feasibility drilling site, the NHPC’s communication strategy, and the status of a township planned for those likely to be displaced.
Following the rally, SIFF sent a letter to Mishra demanding the project’s cancellation and calling for the withdrawal of central forces deployed at the drilling site.
“We don’t want the dam’s construction because it will disastrously affect the lives of the people,” said Taka Pabin, president of Parong village. “We demand scrapping of SUMP because, without local consent, no dam can be built. Downstream areas will suffer”
As protesters marched through Geku, chants of “We don’t want the Siang project!” echoed. More than 1,500 people joined the rally.
Moddo Patuk, SIFF advisor, emphasized the exclusion of locals from the New Delhi meeting: “We were not invited, but police, security personnel, and state government officers were. Without consent, how can they build a dam here? We don’t want a dam that brings misery,” he said.
The state government, however, supports SUMP as a strategic response to China’s proposed 60,000 MW dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo (Siang) River in Tibet. Chief Minister Pema Khandu recently warned that the Chinese project could be a “water bomb,” posing an existential threat to Arunachal Pradesh.
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