Staff Reporter
ITANAGAR, May 30: The Jamiri Village Council (JVC) on Saturday strongly reacted to the 14th Border Roads Task Force (BRTF) Colonel B.S Katal’s statement wherein he blamed ‘high-handedness of a few vested persons’ for the army-civilian scuffle at Jamiri.’
Colonel Katal alleged that the dozer operators and the BRO staff have to bear with high handedness and misbehaviour of few locals with vested interest.
Condemning Colonel Katal’s statement, the JVC demanded him to come out with the identity of those persons whose diktats the BRO staffs had to face.
‘The fact is that locals have given all the cooperation to the GREF authority in nation building since day one. We allowed them to settle in our land and collect natural resources free of cost from our locality,’ the JVC stated.
The village council said that instead of appreciating their cooperation to the GREF, the organization is blaming the locals. The council further claimed that the relationship with GREF was good however, over the last three years, the GREF authority is ‘trying to muzzle the voice of local by using army’s power.’
‘The incident that happened on May 23 was not the first instance where army had beaten and terrorized innocent civilians of Jamiri circle. Such incidents had been experienced many times by the local people,’ it added.
‘The atrocity upon us by the GREF authority was nothing but to hide their unfulfilled promises and assurances made to the local people,’ the JVC retorted adding that GREF had earlier assured to construct a multi-purpose stadium at Jamiri village as land compensation.
The council claimed that locals never interrupt the GREF’s work because they need good roads.
‘However, instead of giving us good roads the locals are being rewarded with atrocity by the army,’ it stated.
