In the second week of February, panic set in among the residents of Tonka, a coastal village in Honnavar taluk of Uttara Kannada. The construction of a private port that they had been opposing for over a decade was to begin soon, disregarding their protests. A survey was to be conducted in connection with this on February 25. Alarmed by the turn of events, residents Renuka and Ganapathy Tandel decided to leave for Bengaluru on February 24 to meet Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
“We left that evening and arrived in Bengaluru on February 25,” Ganapathy told TNM. In Bengaluru, they were barely able to speak to the CM for a few minutes. They hoped to seek the CM’s intervention in halting the building of the private port by the Honnavar Private Port Limited (HPPL) in Tonka village.
The same day, Uttara Kannada district police booked 45 people for allegedly disrupting a survey being conducted by the port authorities, including Renuka and Ganapathy, who were in Bengaluru on February 25, the day of the survey. They were booked for attempt to murder, obstructing public officials from discharging their duties, rioting, assaulting public officials who are on duty, and other offences.
‘Safeguard fishers’ livelihoods’
Tonka 1 and Tonka 2 villages, which fall in Kasarkod gram panchayat limits in Honnavar taluk, have been simmering with tension in the past month over a private port that is to be built by HPPL.
The port, which was proposed to come up on a sand spit at the mouth of the Sharavathi river, was first mooted over a decade ago. The fishing community of these villages oppose the building of the port, which they say will affect their livelihoods. Renuka and Ganapathy belong to the fishing community.
Along with members of the Karavali Karnataka Janabhivriddhi Vedike (KKJV), they met Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on February 25, seeking his intervention in stopping the port project. KKJV urged the CM to halt all port construction activities, withdraw the first information report filed against the protesters and “ensure that the law and order machinery is not used against the citizens who have been trying to safeguard their homes and livelihoods”.
In the memorandum, the KKJV outlined the recent sequence of events that caused anxiety among the residents of Tonka 1 and Tonka 2.
Although the project began in 2012, it ran into several delays, resulting in the expiration of the environmental clearance (EC) in September 2024. In December, the State Environmental Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) issued an EC exempting the port from holding a public hearing.
The exemption is a violation of the law, KKJV alleged.
Residents kept in the dark
The Kasarkod Gram Panchayat discussed the EC during a grama sabha held on January 10 and decided to object to the EC as the SEIAA had not provided a Kannada translation of the document. This decision was communicated to the concerned authorities.
Anxiety rose on February 11, when Superintendent of Police M Narayana visited the village along with Deputy Commissioner Lakshmi Priya and told villagers that the port construction was to begin soon and that village residents must cooperate.
Two days later, on February 13, police turned up in the villages, delivering notices to the residents about a gram sabha to be held that afternoon. However, the panchayat had not called a gram sabha. None of the residents turned up for the gram sabha that the police had announced.
A police outpost put up in the village on February 23 increased the residents’ anxiety. The next evening, “a verbal order for curfew was imposed with the help of loudspeakers” informing them that prohibitory orders would be in place the next day, February 24, as a survey related to the port construction had to be done.
On the day of the survey, tensions rose with desperate villagers walking into the sea in protest. The Honnavar Police Station registered cases against 39 men and seven women. According to activists, the arrested men have all been sent to Dharwad Central Prison.
A third generation fisherman, Ganapathy said that around 25,000-50,000 people in Honnavar taluk will be affected by the port, including fisherfolk and others who work in the fishing industry.
Ganapathy, who has seven cases against him, said that he and others have been opposing the port for over a decade. “The port will affect our homes and our livelihoods. We don’t know any other work. Only if we live near the sea will we be able to fish. [The government] tells us that they will create new jobs. But they’re destroying existing livelihoods to create new jobs. How is that fair?”
This reporting is made possible with support from Report for the World, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project.