Kozhikode: The Punathil Thazham–Puthanvalli Vayal Samrakshana Samithy fighting against a mega hospital project at Edakkad allegedly violating environmental and land-use regulations, says all political parties that were supporting them at the beginning had backed out. Recently police and the corporation demolished the pandal of the action council in front of the construction site as part of its series of agitations against the Rs 500-crore hospital project since June 14, 2014. But the other day the irrigation department had issued a stop memo against erecting a gate on its land.
Sudhesh Kumar, who leads it, said the hospital management was now avenging them using the police and the corporation. He alleged it was an example of the three political formations colluding with such lobbies. “We suspect they were bribed to stab us from behind,” he told DC. The action council also claimed that revenue officials are hand-in-glove with the hospital creating fake records. “When we sought to know the status of the land under the RTI earlier, they said it was paddy land. But later they submitted a report to the corporation saying it was farmland,” he said. Of some 250 households in the area, he claimed, 95 percent are against the project.
If materialised, he said, it would endanger the environment resulting in water scarcity, drainage, sewage problems, flooding and waterlogging, making it unfit to live. Earlier, P.K. Ahammed, chairman of the hospital, had claimed that the project had “all required approvals” from the government and other statutory authorities. He added that “there was a clear provision in the plan to treat polluted water and waste on tits premises. They claimed that it caused no loss to the complainant in the process. The state commission president P.Q. Barkatali and member V.V. Jose on verifying facts and circumstances ordered the bank to pay compensation.
