Oil India Corporation planning natural gas pipes in 20,000 acres of land: Ramadoss

Chennai:  Even while the protests against the hydrocarbon project at Neduvasal in Pudukottai  is continuing for over a fortnight, PMK founder S. Ramadoss on Thursday said the Oil India Corporation has planned to acquire 20,000 acres of land in 13 districts of the state to lay pipelines to carry natural gas and threatened protests against the move. Charging the Union government with trying to ruin agriculture in the state in the name of industrial development, Ramadoss said there are plans to carry out the project with the participation of TIDCO, a state government enterprise, showing that the state government had given its consent. He said the OIC is planning to lay pipelines in four phases from Ennore to Nagapattinam through Puducherry and from Nagapattinam to Tuticorin. The third line would be between Nagapattinam to Madurai besides and the first phase would begin from Ennore to Bangalore.

Ramadoss said the lines would go through five northern districts- Chennai, Thiruvallur, Kanchipuram, Villupuram, Vellore and Cuddalore. The pipelines would be laid in four delta districts Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur, Thanjavur, and Tiruchy besides three districts in the southern region- Madurai, Ramanathapuram and Tuticorin.The first phase of the scheme would be carried out from Ennore to Bangalore and it would go through  agricultural lands and water bodies besides residential areas. The OIC officials have already put up stones with the name of OIC in fields and gardens, he said. For the scheme, agricultural land would have to be acquired, besides residential areas and trees would have to be cut down in large numbers, he said. Ramadoss recalled former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa had stopped similar pipelines through agricultural lands in seven districts of the Kongu region. TIDCO’s participation shows that the present AIADMK government had given their consent. The PMK would mobilise people in Tiruvallur and Vellore and fight against the first phase of the project, he warned.