THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, September 17, 2012 Special Correspondent, The Hindu

Writer Sarah Joseph addressing the Kudankulam Solidarity march at Parassala near Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday.

400-odd activists stopped at border The State police blocked around 400 marchers from Kerala, lead by prominent environment and social activists, at the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border, preventing them from proceeding to Kudankulam.

The Kudankulam Solidarity March, led by poet Sugathakumari, writer Sarah Joseph, Fr. Eugene Pereira of the Thiruvananthapuram Archdiocese and the Palayam Imam Jamaluddin Mankada, social activists K. Ajitha, B.R.P. Bhaskar, C.R. Neelakantan, Vilayodi Venugopal, and N. Subramanian, was prevented from proceeding further at Inchivila on the State border. On being stopped, the marchers staged a sit-in on the highway. Sixty-odd activists proceeded to Kudankulam even after the police action, but they were stopped at Anchugramam.

Once prevented, they returned to the Kerala capital. ‘High stakes for State’ Earlier, inaugurating the march at the hospital junction at Parassala, Sugathakumari said the agitation against the nuclear power plant could not be left to just the local people. Kerala also had high stakes in the issue which should be taken up in all seriousness as was done when a proposal to set up a nuclear power plant at Peringom in north Kerala was mooted.

Ms. Joseph pointed out that opposition to the nuclear power plant was gaining in strength with even the former Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman coming out against it. That being the case, the Prime Minister’s proposal that the mental health of the agitating local villagers should be examined had lost its validity, she said.