Parties ready for joint struggle against ONGC

Kakinada: The leaders of several political parties have called upon all parties to come together for a joint movement beyond politics to get compensation for the fishermen who are suffering losses due to the exploration of oil deposits in the KG basin.

MLA Dwarampudi Chandrasekhar Reddy, CPI state executive committee member Tatipaka Madhu, MLC Karri Padmasree, Tokala Prasad (CPI), Joshua (Aam Aadmi Party), Sampath Kumar (Republican Party of India), Chekka Nukaraju, K Pothuraju (Congress), P Satyanarayana (Bahujan Samaj Party) and others visited the protest camp at Langaru Revu in Kakinada on Sunday and expressed their solidarity.

They said that ONGC should clarify the issue of compensation to the fishermen and suitable solution should come out in the meeting which will be held with ONGC officials and fishermen representatives in the presence of the district collector on Monday.

MLA Dwarampudi said that the seismic survey has already been stopped and warned that if the attitude of ONGC does not change, they will go into the sea and stop further operations.

He questioned why the organisations that are going to earn lakhs of crores of wealth from the KG basin are not ready to do justice to the fishermen. From Uppada to Uppalanka, around 40,000 fishing families are expected to lose employment due to the extraction of oil deposits, he said.