Protesting farmers stand in chest-deep water for 11 days, Kejriwal writes to MP CM

Bhopal: Farmers in Madhya Pradesh continued Tuesday to stand in murky, chest-deep water for the 11th straight day in an unconventional protest over a land dispute.

Around 30 farmers have vowed to keep up their protest by standing in their fields, which have been inundated with water by a nearby dam, despite concerns over their health.

"I will not move out of the water even if I die. I am standing on my land, which has been turned into a lake. The government has cheated us," Raja Ram, one of the farmers, told AFP.

"We want the water level to be decreased immediately and the return of our land," Ram said in Khandwa district, 300 kilometres (186 miles) from state capital Bhopal.

Television footage showed the group of men and sari-clad women looking miserable as they held up banners against the state government's decision to buy their land on the Narmada river for a dam.

Some of the protesters have developed skin infections and a few are running high fevers, according to an activist involved in the protest.

"Their skin is peeling off and wounds have appeared on their body parts," Chittaroopa Palit told AFP.

The government bought thousands of hectares of fertile land from mostly tribal communities to build a dam in 2007. But hundreds of farmers have since returned to their fields, which have become a catchment area for the dam, saying compensation packages were inadequate.

Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has written a letter to his Madhya Pradesh counterpart Shivraj Singh Chouhan requesting him to look into the demands of the people affected by Omkareshwar dam project in Khandwa district and resolve the issues pertaining to their rehabilitation.

In his letter to Chouhan yesterday, Kejriwal said, "I tried to contact you over phone since last couple of days. But due to your tight schedule couldn't get through. I wanted to talk to you over the serious and vexed issue. Agitation over the rehabilitation of people affected by Omkareshwar dam is going on in Narmada Valley. I have been associated with this agitation since quite a long time."

"You, I and your government, court and agitators wish that the affected people should properly be rehabilitated. If they are shifted before rehabilitation, it will amount to injustice to them," the letter further reads.

"Some dam oustees are staging Jal Satyagraha since ten days over the issue. It will be grateful if you talk to them and come out with some foolproof solution to their rehabilitation," Kejriwal said.