VALPOI
Residents of Pali village in Thane-Dongurli Panchayat were the latest to join the agitating locals of Shel-Melauli in opposing the IIT project.
Residents of Pali convened a meeting on Wednesday evening and decided to support the anti-IIT agitation of the Shel-Melauli locals.
On Thursday, a number of residents marched to Melauli and joined the agitating locals, who have been opposing the IIT project and have been demanding land ownership rights for people of Sattari taluka.
Over the past few days, people from several villages have joined the protesting Shel-Melauli locals, prompting Health Minister to petition Chief Minister Pramod Sawant to scrap the project in Melauli.
The agitators claimed that the State government was yet to respond to the request of the Valpoi MLA and insisted that they would withdraw their ongoing agitation only after a government notification scrapping the project at Melauli.
Claiming that they had been cultivating land at the IIT project site for generations, the locals alleged that their names were removed and the State government took over ownership of the land.
