Thiruvananthapuram: The villagers at Idinthakarai in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, about 120 km from here, have continued their protest against commissioning of the nuclear power plant in their neighbourhood, despite a police crackdown on the protesters on Sunday night.
The villagers are agitating against the 2,000MW nuclear plant that is nearing commissioning by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India.
The project, named the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project, was conceived in 1988 but has run into trouble on many occasions, and protests reached a crescendo last year, with villagers resorting to a chain-fasting agitation.
Their protests strengthened after the Fukushima disaster in Japan last March, and the announcement by Germany that it would not have any more nuclear stations.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalitha made a crucial move on Sunday immediately after the by-election to the Sankarankoil constituency, when she ordered state police to ensure security to the plant, and also announced that the state government was convinced about the safety precautions being taken at the plant.
Jayalalitha had earlier taken sides with the villagers and written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to suspend operations at the nuclear plant.
Tamil Nadu is now in the grip of a serious power shortage and Jayalalitha's decision is seen as a rational move, pressured as she is by demands of industry as well as the common man for power supply. The summer has set in and many districts in the state are facing daily power outages that last about six-eight hours.
Coordinator of the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy, S.P. Udayakumar, alleged yesterday that the state government was treating the protesters like terrorists, and that the nuclear plant authorities had yet to give the necessary drills to the villagers to be adopted in case of an emergency.
