NEW DELHI: The Janata Dal (United) on Monday announced a countrywide agitation on October 12 — the death anniversary of socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia — against the United Progressive Alliance government for creating Special Economic Zones on fertile agricultural land. The party, along with the Akali Dal and Uttar Pradesh-based Apna Dal, sought immediate stay on the "anti-farmer" SEZ Act, 2005, under which this was being done, at a farmers' dharna organised here.

They later sent a memorandum to President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam seeking his intervention in the matter. "It is our firm opinion that the SEZ is a real estate scam and has nothing to do with export promotion and foreign capital inflow," the memorandum said.

It sought a serious public debate on the issue inside and outside Parliament before preparation of any policy for export promotion and Foreign Direct Investment.

Addressing the dharna here, Janata Dal (United) president Sharad Yadav alleged that Congress president Sonia Gandhi was not serious about her concern expressed at Nainital on Saturday that productive farm land was going under SEZ.

"Had she been really serious she would have asked the Congress Government in Haryana and elsewhere to revoke the sanction given to industrialists and corporate builders for usurping huge areas of farm land. The sanction is permission given for grabbing land and uprooting garib aadmi (poor man)."

Charging the UPA Government with being "insensitive to aam aadmi," Mr. Yadav said there was an increase in prices of essential commodities, farmers' suicides and unemployment during its rule. "Those who run the government are following capitalist policies. They unrealistically want to convert India into Europe, in an uneven situation when the per capita income in Europe is 300 times more than in India.''

`Leave farmland alone'

He said SEZs, if at all, should come up in remote and dryland areas not on fertile land that will impact the food security. "The farmland in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh feeds the country. It should not be concretised.''

Akali leader S.S. Dhindsa alleged that there was "loot" of land in Punjab under the garb of SEZs. He wanted farmers to be given 30 per cent more than the market price for the land that went to SEZs. "A body of the village sarpanch, the area MLA, MP, District Commissioner, Sub-Divisional Magistrate should decide the price of land that is taken over for SEZs. The farmer who loses his land should be paid 30 per cent over and above what such a panel decides."

Apna Dal's Soney Lal Patel urged the people to resist the allotment of their land for hi-tech companies, industrial development and SEZs. "We are not against industrial development but why on farm land and why not in poor regions of the country," he asked.

Urging the Congress to try and understand the voice of the kisans and the mazdoors, he said a national authority with farmers representatives should be set up to decide the cost of farm commodities; farmers should have a guarantee about their produce being bought and there should be no tax benefit to SEZs.

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