Locals turn violent, prevent work on Vedanta University

Puri, Nov 4 (UNI) Hundreds of villagers protesting the proposed Vedant University by the Anil Agarwal Foundation, today damaged machines, assaulted the Vedanta officials and workers during a construction work of a road connecting the marine drive to the project site.

Police said a private contractor entrusted with the road construction work faced the wrath of the villagers, who damaged the machine, assaulted the workers and some Vedanta officials and kept them as hostage.

Later, police force rushed to the site and rescued the contractor, his work force and some officials of Vedanta University project.

The Anil Agarwal Foundation has proposed to set up a world class multidisciplinary Vedanta University at an investment of Rs 15,000 crore over 6000 acres of land on the Puri-Konark marine drive area.

However, the local people who were likely to be displaced by the proposed university project, had been opposing the land acquisition and preventing the Vedanta to undertake any work ever since it had signed the MoU with the Orissa government and acquired land for the university project.

UNI XC-DP KK AKJ HT1850