Remains of abandoned houses at Patani village. Telegraph picture

Paradip, March 11: The houses look haunted and are almost in ruins. These deserted homes remind one of intriguing social divide and mutual distrust in a village coming under the proposed Posco steel plant.

The occupants of these houses have preferred to leave them with security concerns in their mind.

At least 52 families from Patana village in Jagatsinghpur had to pay for their pro-plant stance. That was about four years ago.

Ostracised by majority of the villagers and tormented by an outfit spearheading the resistance movement against the Korean plant, the traumatised pro-plant supporters now stay in a transit colony.

“We are leading a condemned life. Though the government has given us shelter in the transit colony, we are caught in a vicious cycle of goons’ anger and administrative indifference,” said Chandan Mohanty, a resident of the transit colony at Badagabapur in Jagatsinghpur district’s Erasama block.

More than 50 families including that of Mohanty’s fled their native village after those opposing the steel plant created a lot of trouble for them there.

The people rendered houseless were resettled in the transit colony on June 26, 2007.

Forty-eight-year-old Mohanty was quite affluent according to rural standards. He owned two acres of fertile cultivable land and a betel vine over 40 decimals of land. His monthly income from the crop fields and betel plants was no less than Rs 20,000.

Fours years after being shunted out from the birthplace, the four-member family is being doled out Rs 2,400 a month subsistence allowance by the district administration.

“It’s a classic case of violation of human rights. We are living banished because the administration is looking the other way. We want to go back to our village regardless of the fate of the steel project. The government should ensure our safe return to village”, Mohanty said.

“My elder son Arupananda had to discontinue his studying at Rahama College. My younger son Dilip has stopped going to school. He was in Class VII when the trouble broke out. Once I used to employ labourers to work in my betel vines and crop fields, but now I have become a daily labourer myself,” he said.

“People in the transit colony are virtually caged. They should be freed from the bondage. The government should provide them security and allow them to go back to the village,” said Nirvaya Kumar Samantaray, secretary of United Action Committee (UAC), a pro-plant outfit.

While the UAC is voicing its support for the return of these families to their native villages, Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), spearheading agitation against the project, is steadfast in blocking their return.

“We are running from pillar to post to earn our daily bread. The doors of education are shut for our children. Nobody is willing to marry young girls from the transit colony. We are traumatised. They had beaten us up. They had burnt our houses and had ravaged our betel vines and crop fields. But the isolated life that we are living is even more traumatic and humiliating than that was meted out to us four years ago,” said 40-year-old Suresh Muduli.

“We have nothing against those living in the transit colony. We did not harm them. They fled because the people had boycotted them. They faced the people’s wrath because they acted as steel company’s agents. They went against the larger interests as people here are fighting against displacement,” said Sisir Kumar Mahapatra, sarpanch of Dhinkia gram panchayat.

“The block administration is aware of their plight. Measures are on to address to their difficulties,” said Muralidhar Swain, block development officer of Erasama block.