Lower Suktel project faces resistance

Bhubaneswar: A day before commencement of construction work, the Rs 1,041 crore Lower Suktel irrigation project is facing stiff resistance with members of Lower Suktel Sangram Parishad holding demonstrations at the project site in Bolangir on Wednesday.

Hundreds of the parishad members holding red flags marched to the project site in the morning and shouted anti-government slogans and demanded to stop the work, scheduled to start from tomorrow.

Meanwhile, state-run Odisha Construction Corporation (OCC), who has been awarded the contract, inspected the project site on Tuesday with all its machineries.

The project which got the state government nod in 1999 once functional, it is estimated, to affect around 5,309 families of 29 villages.

To thwart any untoward incident the state government has deployed four platoons of armed police forces at the site, said official sources.