Accusing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of adopting double standards, the Anti-Koodankulam Struggle Committee will go ahead with proposed one-day fast tomorrow at Idinthakarai village demanding scrapping of the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project.

Talking to reporters at the airport here last night on his arrival from New Delhi after meeting the Prime Minister on the issue, struggle Committee Convenor S P Udayakumar accused Dr Manmohan Singh of adopting double standards on the issue.

”While assuring the Struggle Committee and the Tamilnadu government delegation that a high-level panel will be formed to address the concerns of the locals, the Prime Minister had written a letter to Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa seeking her government’s support and cooperation in ensuring the timely implementation of the Koodankulam Project’, he said.

‘We went with high hopes to New Delhi and we are satisfied with the meeting we had with the Prime Minister’, he said.

”Our hopes are now dashed following Manmohan Singh’s letter to Jayalalithaa seeking her support for implementing the project’, Udayakumar said, adding, the Struggle Committee has no alternative other than to go ahead with tomorrow’s fast at Idinthakarai village to press for shelving the project.

Udayakumar said the Prime Minister assured them that he would constitute a high-level panel to visit Idinthakarai village and talk to the locals.

‘But information on who will be part of the panel, when it will be constituted and when it will submit its report to the government are not forthcoming’, he said.

‘We don’t want any panel, we want the entire project to be scrapped. We have insisted on this during the meeting with the Prime Minister, who had said that project works have been stopped till further orders’, he added.

Udayakumar said when the 13-member Struggle Committee delegation told the Prime Minister that works were not halted and were going on, Union Minister V Narayanasamy, who was present, intervened to say that only maintenance works were going on.

When Narayanasamy contended that no fresh construction works were taken up at the project site, Udayakumar said he told the minister that even the maintenance works should be stopped.

Udayakumar said despite the struggle committee’s insistence that the project should be scrapped, ‘our hopes are dashed when he came to know after landing in Chennai that the Prime Minister had written a letter to the Chief Minister seeking her cooperation for ensuring that the project was completed in time’.

‘By seeking the Tamilnadu government’s cooperation, the Prime Minister had ignored the sentiments of the Struggle Committee and the State Cabinet resolution, calling for immediate halt in works in the proejct site till the fears of the locals are allayed in the wake of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan’, he added.

He said he would discuss the outcome of the Delhi visit with the locals and other Struggle Committee members before chalking out the next course of action.

Article Courtesy: News Today