ITANAGAR, 25 Mar: Members of the Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum (SIFF) on Saturday informed that they will launch a stir “if the 10,000 mw hydroelectric project (HEP) is not shifted from Siang district.”
Addressing the media at the press club here, SIFF president Tasik Pangkam said, “I have been working for this cause and its removal over the past 13 years, and recently, in a United Nations’ Human Rights meeting in Kathmandu (Nepal), we, along with other representatives from Arunachal Pradesh, submitted our issues there.”
“The NHPC and the government have been behaving arrogantly and undemo-cratically,” said Pangkam, adding that “even the officials from the Jal Jeevan Mission came to our village without intimating us.”
“We Adis are different from other tribes in Arunachal Pradesh. We have our own land holding system. We will launch a democratic movement if the government doesn’t hear our pleas,” he said, and added
that “this is not the first time that we are voicing out like this.”
“Once it (the project) is implemented, all the livestock, forests and animals will be submerged underwater,” he said, and added that “it is against the state’s Hydropower Act of 2013.”
