The roads are blocked. The anger is real. And Geku’s message to the government couldn’t be any clearer. As Chief Minister Pema Khandu prepares to visit Boleng in Siang district on September 29 and Yingkiong in Upper Siang district on September 30, the mood in the Siang Valley is anything but welcoming. Villagers in Geku … Read more
Pema Khandu says the government will not push the SUMP against the people’s will. Yet roads are blocked, four villagers were detained, and security is pouring in. Something doesn’t add up. The Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh says he won’t use force. But try telling that to the villagers of Geku, who spent Monday blocking … Read more
The Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee has sent a fact-finding team straight into the heart of SUMP country. With paramilitary boots already on the ground there, someone needs to ask the questions that aren’t being answered. There is something happening in the Siang region of Arunachal Pradesh that the government hasn’t fully explained. Communities are rattled. … Read more
They’ve had enough. The Adi Bane Kebang-United (ABK-U), the apex body of the Adi community in Arunachal Pradesh, has made its position crystal clear — the proposed Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP) must go. Not be reviewed. Not be paused. Gone. At a press conference held at the Arunachal Press Club in Itanagar on Tuesday, … Read more
A human rights organisation has done something that rarely happens in Arunachal Pradesh’s development debates — it has openly sided with the people over the project. The Human Rights of Arunachal (HRA) on Thursday threw its weight behind the ongoing protests against the proposed Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP), calling on the state government to … Read more
When armed forces roll into your village not during a conflict, but during a survey — you have to ask whose development this really is. That’s essentially the question the Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) is raising after the state government deployed a heavy presence of central armed police forces and other security personnel in … Read more
Four issues. One state. And a party that says it has been ignored long enough. The Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) has formally urged Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi to take up four critical issues concerning the state when Parliament is in session — a move that signals growing frustration within the party over what … Read more
