Curbs on Shiv Sena (UBT) leaders going to Ratnagiri refinery site

Ratnagiri: As hundreds of villagers continued their protest for the third day, the Maharashtra Police have banned the entry of several Shiv Sena (UBT) leaders to the proposed giant Ratnagiri Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd, coming up with Arab help near Barsu, officials said here on Wednesday.

Notices have been served on various Sena (UBT) leaders, including MP Vinayak Raut and the party's district chief Vilas R. Chalke and others, asking them not to proceed to Barsu as a potential law and order situation could arise.

Ignoring the government's pleas Raut and others have decided to travel to Barsu and meet the agitation villagers today.

Taking a tough stance, the Ratnagiri Police have extended the prohibitory orders in the RRPL site vicinity till May 31 in view of the drone survey and land drilling works taken up there.

The prohibitory orders are applicable within one km of Barsu, Panhale, Dhopeshwar, Goval, Varchiwadi-Goval, Khalchiwadi-Goval, and those flouting them shall be penalised, said the Police Inspector Vineet Chaudhary.

The Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi leaders have urged the ruling Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party government to exercise restraint, call off the soil survey and testing and allow the villagers their right to protest against the project in the lush coastal belt.

Congress's Nana Patole, Balasaheb Thorat, Atul Londhe, Nationalist Congress Party's Leader of Opposition (Assembly) Ajit Pawar, Jayant Patil, Sena (UBT)'s Leader of Opposition (Council) Ambadas Danve, Aditya Thackeray, Sanjay Raut, Vinayak Raut, Anil Parab, CPI (M) and other parties' leaders have strongly castigated the government for trying to crush the villagers' protests.

However, BJP's Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis said that irrespective of the protests, there's no going back and "the RRPL project will come up in the state at the proposed location".

Sena's Industry Minister has said that it was the MVA government headed by ex-CM Uddhav Thackeray which had suggested the Barsu location and accused the Opposition of playing political games.

Protests and a political slugfest again hit the planned Rs 300,000-crore RRPL mega-venture - promoted by IOCL, HPCL and BPCL - coming up in Rajapur taluka with help of Saudi ARAMCO and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, and would be world's biggest single location refinery.

The RRPL project will be barely kms from the proposed world's largest Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant (JNPP) in Ratnagiri, which has also been mired in controversies, strong opposition and protests by the locals since over a decade.