BHUBANESWAR: Basudev Bhoi was five years old when he inherited a prolonged battle from his father who made a `sacrifice' to make way for Hirakud Dam, the first big dam project in liberated India.

This year, the dam completed 50 years of its existence. But, Bhoi's battle to get compensation for his 25 acres of land that was submerged by the waters of Hirakud reservoir continues.

Determined effort

He is determined not to pass on the battle to his seven children and settle it during his lifetime. But all his confidence appears shattered when he narrates that he has met in vain three Chief Ministers, over seven Revenue Ministers and scores of bureaucrats to get back the compensation.

Now 55, Mr. Bhoi is not the lone person to fight the battle. Kainth Bansoor, 65, from undivided Sambalpur district, tells the same story.

Over 50 family members from the area, which was submerged by the waters, arrived at the State Capital on Friday to reiterate their demand for compensation as the State Assembly was in session. Throughout the day, they kept raising slogans for early settlement of their dispute.

A delegation under the banner of Budi Anchal Sangram Samiti (BASS), Lakhanpur, met State Minister for Relief and Rehabilitation Manmohan Samal to submit a memorandum describing how the affected families were given assurances by different committees and how the fund crunch delayed disbursement of the compensation. The Hirakud multipurpose river valley project on the Mahanadi in Sambalpur district was conceived way back in 1948 and was completed in 1957. As per a Revenue Department statistics, the reservoir caused submergence of 74,300 hectares of land, including 23,988 hectares of forest cover and 49,888 hectares of agricultural land. The project affected 285 villages of which 249 villages were (108 fully and 141 partly affected) in Orissa and 36 villages (3 fully and 33 partly) in Madhya Pradesh. Some one lakh people from 22,141 families were displaced. Only 2,185 families were resettled in 17 rehabilitation camps. For this, 3,134.71 acres of private land and 221.91 acres of forest were acquired for the resettlement of displaced persons.

"Some 1,000 applications in Rengali tahsil, 500 applications in Kuchinda, 1,000 in Himgir tahsil in Sundargarh district have been submitted to respective tehsildars but not a single family has yet been given homestead and patta in order to complete the resettlement work," BASS secretary Gopinath Majhi said.

Livelihood threat

Mr. Majhi said 11,000 farmer families that turned to fishing resettled themselves in the periphery of the reservoir and they entirely relied on fishing for livelihood. "As their fishing rights are going to be jeopardized due to reservoir policies of the government, steps must be taken not to displace them from livelihood now," he said.

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