PHOTO: R.V. MOORTHY

FILLIP TO ANDOLAN: Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy joins Narmada Bachao Andolan activists in a traditional dance during a demonstration at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Friday. She has been supporting NBA leader Medha Patkar, who is on fast.

NEW DELHI: Even as the fasting Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar is confined to the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences here for the third day, the Narmada dam-displaced families on dharna have demanded that the Government end her "isolation" and release her.

"The NBA takes strong exception to the fact that Medha Patkar has been isolated by the administration and the police. This isolation is a total violation of her democratic rights. We demand that she be allowed to meet any person she wants to meet," the protesters said on Friday.

A worker said when Ms. Patkar demanded that she be allowed to go back to the Jantar Mantar dharna site, where a dam oustee, Bhagwatibehn, has been on fast for the past 10 days, she was told that it was hot and dehydrating outside. Ms. Patkar reportedly told doctors that she was used to the hot climate rather than the air-conditioned chill of the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit. A posse of police has been posted outside the unit.

The Parliament Street police have registered a case of attempt to suicide under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code against her.

Meanwhile, the support for the Narmada struggle by civil society groups and other organisations and prominent citizens swelled. NBA's Dipti said it appeared that officials wanted the visit by the Central Ministers to Madhya Pradesh a "token" gesture. However, the affected people persuaded them to visit some of the submergence villages in Piplod, Alwada and Nasirpur. Until then they had visited only rehabilitation sites.

Chief Minister Shivraj Chauhan accompanied Union Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz, Social Justice and Employment Minister Meira Kumar and Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office Prithviraj Chauhan. They are returning on Saturday.

Writer Arundhati Roy, one of the signatories to a statement condemning the high-handed manner in which the Centre responded to the peaceful movement, said the Government should put on its web site a village-wise list of the people affected by the dam, at the height of 110.64 metres and at the proposed height of 121.92 metres, and details of how and where they were rehabilitated.

Kamal Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University, who joined the hunger-strike in solidarity with the NBA, said: "When the Government does not have the capacity for rehabilitation of the displaced families — as we have been told by Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil — they should not have built the dam. Development has to be for people, not over their bodies. Even the World Bank does not say that."

Mona Das, president of the JNU Students Union, who also went on fast, said the overwhelming support for the NBA proved the Government wrong if it thought that there would be a leadership crisis once Ms. Patkar was removed from the scene. "It is unbelievable that the Ministers can assess in one day displacement of 20 years."

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