Chandigarh: With barely 24 hours to go before the court-mandated deadline to shift protesters camped outside a liquor distilling plant in Punjab’s Ferozepur, police and protesters clashed for a second consecutive day in Mansurwal village where over 2,000 policemen have been deployed to maintain law and order.
Members of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) Ugrahan broke through police barricades on the Amritsar-Bathinda highway Monday, not far from the village, while they were on their way to join protesters demanding the closure of the plant in Zira assembly constituency.
Alleging that the liquor distilling plant is polluting the air, soil and groundwater in Mansurwal and nearby villages, hundreds of protesters have been camped outside the main gate of Malbros International Pvt Ltd for the past five months, crippling operations and forcing the management to approach the Punjab and Haryana High Court for relief.
Crowds outside the plant swelled Monday after Punjab-based farmer leaders including Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) Rajewal chief Balbir Singh Rajewal, Jagjit Singh Dallewal of BKU Sidhupur and Joginder Singh Ugrahan of the BKU Ugrahan called on their supporters to reach the protest site.
Farmers from nearby villages started pouring into Mansurwal as videos of police manhandling and pushing protesters into police vehicles went viral Sunday. Police also put up barricades on the road connecting the village and the highway to prevent locals from reaching the protest site.
While one group of protesters clashed with police on a road leading to the plant, another trying to stage a dharna (sit-in) on the nearby Amritsar-Bathinda highway was ‘forcibly vacated’ by the police Sunday. “As many as 47 persons have been detained and four FIRs lodged against the protesters,” said Ferozepur SSP Kanwardeep Kaur.
However, police took no action against protesters sitting in tents erected opposite the main gate of the plant.
Refusing to budge from the site, protesters insisted that their demands — that the plant be sealed and the Punjab government withdraw the NOC (no-objection certificate) issued to the plant in 2021 — be fulfilled. The protesters even began an akhand paath (unbroken reading) of the Guru Granth Sahib at the protest site Saturday.
A monitoring committee of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), acting on a complaint by the protesters, had collected soil and water samples from inside and around the plant in August. In a detailed report submitted to the NGT in October, the panel gave a clean chit to the management which the protesters have refused to acknowledge.
The Punjab Pollution Control Board, too, had issued a clean chit to the plant in July after probing the allegations levelled against its management by the protesters.
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‘Will not allow factory to run’
The permanent sit-in protest or pucca dharna outside the liquor plant’s main gate began on July 24, bringing operations to a halt and forcing management to approach the Punjab and Haryana HC for relief.
In their submission to the court in July, the management claimed that the closure was costing them lakhs in operating costs each day since they had invested Rs 300 crore in setting up the plant, besides costing the Punjab government several crores in revenue in terms of excise and other taxes. The court, in turn, asked the state government to ensure that protesters are kept at a minimum distance of 300 metres from the plant’s main gate.
SSP Kaur told ThePrint Monday that another gate of the plant, which is around 300 metres from the protest site, has been opened to comply with the high court’s orders. “Some factory staff have already entered from this gate and are cleaning the premises,” she added.
Protesters, however, denied any such developments. “Both the gates of the factory are locked and nobody has been allowed to go inside. We will not allow the factory to run or the gates to open till our demands are met. Our leadership will hold a meeting tomorrow to decide on the next course of action,” said Sukhjinder Singh Khosa, one of the protest leaders.
On Friday, a 21-member delegation of protesters met Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann who offered to set up multiple committees to undertake an in-depth probe into the allegations levelled by them against the plant. A day later, state agriculture minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal visited the protest site and tried to reason with demonstrators who refused to withdraw the protest until the plant was permanently closed.
After talks with protesters failed, the Punjab government had heightened the deployment of police personnel in and around the village, besides the deployment of anti-riot vehicles and JCBs. An FIR was also lodged against 14 protest leaders and 125 unidentified protesters Saturday night.
In another order dated 22 November, the HC had warned the Bhagwant Mann-led government that failure to reopen the plant would lead to senior officers being hauled up for contempt. The court had also directed the government to deposit a fine of Rs 15 crore in the court’s registry to compensate the management for the losses incurred by them owing to the plant’s closure. The matter is slated to be heard next on 20 December.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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