Medha Patkar in jail: MP BJP leaders resign in protest

Dhar (Madhya Pradesh): In protest against jailing of Narmada Bachao Andolan (NDA) leader Medha Patkar after "framing her in false charges", the office-bearers of Kadmal unit of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Madhya Pradesh on Friday resigned en masse. Patkar is fighting for those living along the river Narmada and facing inundation due to increased height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam. They said that instead of saving and rehabilitating the people facing inundation, the administration was busy threatening them and resorting to other coercive measures to vacate the area. A press release issued by the Andolan on Friday said that use of force and police excesses were in full play in the Narmada valley region. The NBA activists, together with the people displaced in the region, held several meetings in Kukshi and Manawar tehsils, Adivasi-majority Sondul Patti and a number of villages in Barwani district. In these meetings, people said the administration was pressuring them to vacate their villages and that if they failed to do so, the authorities threatening that they would lodge false against them and send to jail, the release said. It also claimed that false cases had been filed against Patkar, due to which she had been in Dhar jail for the last nine days.