Dialogue and deployment are running side by side in the Siang region, where a minister has met representatives of a dam-affected forum even as large numbers of central forces remain posted across three districts.
Minister Ojing Tasing met the East Siang Downstream Dam Affected People’s Forum, led by Oni Tamuk and Jobomchang Mengu, according to reports of the meeting. The forum represents 72 villages concerned about the 11,200 MW project, and Tasing chairs a cabinet-appointed committee dealing with the project’s pre-feasibility report. He is reported to have insisted that development must move forward with public trust.
Heavy deployment across the Siang districts
The meeting took place against a backdrop of heavy security deployment. Arunachal Pradesh has deployed 30 companies of central armed forces across East Siang, Siang and Upper Siang, according to police. The deployment includes personnel from the Central Reserve Police Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the Sashastra Seema Bal, the Rapid Action Force and an Assam Police battalion.
Police said the forces are guarding the homes of senior political leaders, including BJP president Kaling Moyong, MLAs Ninong Ering and Oni Panyang, and MP Tapir Gao. Inspector General of Police Hibu Tamang is reported to have said that 69 people have been arrested in connection with rioting and arson, 53 criminal cases have been registered, and notices have been issued to 201 individuals. Five minors are in a juvenile home, according to the same police account. Those figures are police claims, not independently verified in full.
Why the project divides opinion
Opponents of the project fear that a large reservoir would submerge ancestral villages of the Adi tribe and damage land, livelihoods and cultural heritage. One community representative has said that 27 ancestral villages would be completely submerged if the project is built, with 40 to 50 more affected. Supporters of the project, including the state government, present it as important for national energy security and as a strategic response to a large hydropower project planned upstream in Tibet, where the Siang is known as the Yarlung Zangbo.
The state government’s earlier talks with community groups over the Siang project show that dialogue has been tried before, while the Centre’s deployment of additional forces to the Siang region underlines how seriously the administration is taking the law-and-order situation.
What to watch
The test of the latest meeting is whether it leads to a concrete process: who is invited, what documents are shared, and whether affected villages get a genuine say in the pre-feasibility stage. Without that, a single meeting may calm the immediate tension without resolving the deeper dispute over land, consent and the future of the Siang valley.
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