An apple cider vinegar manufacturing company has blocked a common path passing through its industrial plot by installing a barbed wire around it, causing inconvenience to residents of Banalgi village in Darwa panchayat of Kasauli subdivision in Solan district. The villagers have to take a long detour to go to their fields and other villages. “Local children have to walk around 2 km to reach their middle school while devotees have to walk a long distance to pay obeisance at a Hanuman temple,” rued villagers who gathered at there on Tuesday and held a protest.
The protesters demanded that the earlier pathway be restored immediately. They said that when the company employees were using the common path to reach their factory why locals couldn’t use it. They also gave a representation to the SDM, Kasauli. They demanded immediate restoration of the path and threatened to launch an agitation and also explore legal options if their demand was not met.
The protesting villagers pressed for an amicable solution to the problem and proposed that the path leading to their fields should be left open while the other one leading to the school could be locked after 5 pm if the company suspects mischief.
Former up-pradhans Hira Lal and Ramesh Kumar, who took part in the protest, said that villagers of nearby areas like Shama Ghat also use this shorter route to travel to Banalgi and its closure would cause inconvenience to a large number of people.
The agitating villagers claimed that as per the revenue records, this land had been listed as a common path for decades and the company couldn’t close it arbitrarily.
They argued that since the company had installed CCTV cameras outside its factory, it could keep a watch on suspicious activities without blocking the common path.
General Manager, District Industries Centre, Solan, Surinder Thakur said that the factory operating at a leased industrial plot at Banalgi was obliged to cordon off its area, as stipulated under the Himachal Pradesh Excise Act. He added that earlier the villagers were permitted to use a common path passing through the factory but later another path was carved out. The other path, too, had been closed now by erecting a barbed wire, as per the legal mandate of the factory, he asserted.