Kolar, 21 Feb

Angered that he and other local representatives were not invited to the inauguration of TATA Airbus Helicopters' manufacturing facility in Vemagal of the district on Tuesday, Manjunath said that private companies were ill-treating local farmers by not providing adequate job opportunities or land compensation.

He claimed on Thursday that the companies, which had promised to provide jobs for the locals whose land they had acquired, terminated the employees quickly and instead preferred to hire people from neighbouring states.

He added that when jobs were given to the local population, they were low-paying, while the high-paying jobs were given to people from outside.

He said the power supply in and around Vemagal, where huge industries have come up, will be affected as the BESCOM authorities are not erecting a separate transformer to supply power to these companies.

Hence, power supply to farm lands would be hit.

He courted controversy by saying that power should be cut to the Vemagal industrial area, claiming that he was fighting for farmers and not because he was snubbed from the event inaugurated by the Union Defence Minister.

He said that tractors could be driven into transformers to disrupt the electricity lines.