Social activist Medha Patkar visited  the Interim Secretariat Complex at Velagapudi in Guntur district on Thursday.

Speaking to The Hindu, Ms. Patkar felt that Amaravati “will collapse on its own.” “Amaravati appears to be a piece of real estate and not a real Capital. The people’s natural resource capital is robbed. No doubt about it,” Ms. Medha Patkar said.

“The project may not stop as Chief Minister (N. Chandrababu Naidu) was defiant of people’s democracy. He would not easily bow down and hold a dialogue with the (people’s) organizations. Otherwise, there would not have been a conflict. There is no dispute resolution in this country with regard to forest, land, and water. That’s the tragedy of development paradigm,” she said.

Ms. Patkar said "it was necessary to question the distorted ways of development, undemocratic and unjust means. The Amaravati project would have come to a standstill had she camped here for six months. It did not happen because of time constraint, lack of strong cadre and strong alliances in the region."

As a case was pending with the National Green Tribunal (NGT), Ms. Patkar found fault with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he attended the foundation stone-laying ceremony for Amaravati.

Ms. Patkar said, “That’s the kind of approach he (Mr. Modi) has towards the project. Mr. Modi took one-sided decisions such as increasing the height of the Narmada dam by 17 meters, keeping his Cabinet colleagues, including the Social Justice Minister, in the dark."

Medha Patkar also led a delegation of the National Alliance of Peoples’ Movements (NAPM) in Vijayawada on Thursday. There the delegation alleged that "the State government had violated all existing laws of the land in the name of building a new capital city." They also accused that "the State government is destroying agriculture and natural resources in the new capital."

Addressing a press conference, Medha Patkar accused that "the government of ignoring tenets of Land Acquisition Act of 2013, the environmental acts and the rights of the people in the villages.  The government has made several people jobless. It has taken up various massive constructions as temporary works and thus wasting public money. We can’t expect a government to spend a whopping Rs 800 crore on a building and call it the temporary office."

She said that "the rights of the agriculture workers, Dalits, women and others in the 29 villages are suppressed and their welfare was ignored. She urged the human rights activists to fight for the people. She also found fault with the indiscriminate mining of sand in the river Krishna and said that the mining would pose a greater threat to the cities of Amaravati and Vijayawada in near future. She said that the government was not following the laws related to mining activity. "

Minister Vadde Sobhanadreeswara Rao, capital area farmers activist Anumolu Gandhi, and others were also present.

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BY M. DIVYA SRI