Twist in Ratle project row: J&K Police wrote last month warning about 29 with ‘terror or criminal’ backgrounds

In the letter, addressed to General Manager, MEIL, Kishtwar Senior Superintendent of Police Naresh Singh said that as part of a routine police verification of Kishtwar residents working for the project, the SHOs concerned had submitted reports, and 29 had been “found involved in subversive/anti-national activities’’. “By engaging these employees, security of Power Project gets compromised as these individuals are having militancy links/criminal background,” said SSP Singh, enclosing a list of the 29 names.

Underlining the strategic and national significance of hydro-electric projects, and how they were “high-risk targets of enemy country”, the SSP said “there is a need to reconsider the engagement of such employees/workers… as (they) can do anything and pose a threat to the project’’.

Singh urged the MEIL official “to keep a close watch/surveillance over the activities of such employees/workers’’ and to inform police immediately “if anything adverse/suspicious comes to notice’’ so that action could be taken.

Of the 29, all employed in junior positions at the project, five are listed in the police verification report as having “militancy links”, including three relatives of a long-time militant of the area, a son of a suspected overground militant worker, and a son of a surrendered militant. One of the 29 is alleged to have contaminated some water sources and forged documents, while the other 23 are listed as having a “criminal background”, facing charges such as criminal trespass, mischief with an intent to cause wrongful loss or damage to public or an individual etc.

SSP Singh could not be contacted.

MEIL COO Harpal Singh, who is in-charge of the Ratle project, admitted receiving the police advice and said they had replied to the SSP only last week assuring that they would keep a watch and report if they noticed any suspicious activity.

Asked whether MEIL planned to retrench the 29, Harpal Singh said: “Under what law can we take action against them? If someone’s father or relative is an active or surrendered militant, then what is one’s offence? Likewise, how one can proceed against a person against whom a criminal charge is yet to be established in a court of law?’’

If retrenched, the men could go to court, the COO said, causing another problem for the company.

Last week, Harpal Singh had gone vocal with his claims that the Ratle project – slated for completion by September 2026 at a cost of Rs 3,700 crore – is delayed by two years, attributing it chiefly to the disruptions caused by MLA Shagun Parihar.

The COO alleged that Parihar has been pushing the company to hire “her people” since her election last year, and that the company’s decision to retrench 200 workers in September had significantly escalated tensions. He claimed: “Of the 1,434 local people recruited by the company, 960 are from Kishtwar district alone and another 220 from Doda district. Nearly 50 per cent of them either don’t know the work for which they have been recruited or don’t want to work.”

Harpal Singh told The Indian Express that as for the 29 listed by the SSP as having militant or criminal background, all had been recruited before he took charge of the Ratle project in July 2024, and had been working on the project for several years. “Besides, all the nearly 1,100 employees/workers at the project from Kishtwar and Doda districts have been recruited under pressure from local BJP leaders, as only they enjoy clout in the area.”

Parihar denied influencing recruitments, telling The Indian Express: “It is rather I who has been raising this issue.”

She also asked why MEIL had not retrenched the 29 people mentioned by police “while dispensing with the services of nearly 200 workers early this month’’.

On Harpal Singh allegations against her, Parihar called them “irresponsible” and “irrelevant”, and meant to malign her as a woman MLA and hide the company’s “incompetence”.

After the COO had gone public with his charges, Parihar had accused him of trying to create an atmosphere congenial for communal violence in the district, and said that most of the people recruited by him happen to be surrendered militants. She said he had recently retrenched a Kashmiri Pandit youth and in his place recruited a local person from Banihal with terror links.

Work on the Ratle Hydel Power Project began in 2008, when J&K decided to commission it in the state sector through Jammu and Kashmir Power Development Corporation Limited. The latter signed an MoU with GVK Industries Limited, which awarded the contract to L&T. It worked at the site till 2014, when a mob of locals forced L&T’s engineers out and locked the camp. The engineers left the site the same night, after which the J&K government decided to turn the project into a joint venture with the Government of India.