We write to you in solidarity against the uranium trade deal that has been negotiated by the Indian and Australian Governments since 2012. When Tony Abbott seeks to seal the deal with Narendra Modi to export Australian uranium to your country, he does so against the wishes of two-thirds of the Australian population.

After a gap of nearly six months, a series of protests seemed to once again shake the sleepy Mithi Virdi village, not very far from Gujarat’s south Saurashtra coast, where the Government of India has proposed a 6000 MW nuclear power plant. Led by Vadodara-based environmental organization Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS), the protesters feared that recent efforts to water down the new Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 might only aggravate the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd’s move to acquire land near Mithi Virdi.

Why does the government brutally silence local dissent and turns the public hearings invariably into cruel jokes, when it is so sure about the shining claims of nuclear energy? If it is the safest technology and the best solution for the people’s progress, why is their constitutionally mandated participation in the decision-making process denied so violently?

“Not here, not anywhere; not in any country in the world” – with these slogans the people (farmers and other villagers) affected by the proposed 6000 MW nuclear power plant at village Mithi Virdi in Bhavnagar, Gujarat took out a massive rally to meet the Collector, Bhavnagar culminating in a public meeting and presented a memorandum to him. They also put a challenge to the Prime Minister on the eve of his departure for the USA