Koraon, Prayagraj: Nearly 200 people, including women residents from several villages in Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj district, on Wednesday (October 10), led a blockade that forced a National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) team and the JCB it had brought with it to turn around and leave the Koraon Tehsil. The residents of Devari and Latifpur villages and their neighbours, in the eastern part of the state, have been opposing a proposed nuclear power plant in their tehsil, saying they refuse to give up their land for it. “Around midday on that day, we got the information that a NTPC team with local lekhpal (revenue officer) were coming with a JCB to dig and collect soil samples, so we got together and went to block the road,” said Geeta Devi Kol, whose community is listed as a Scheduled Tribe, entitled to special protections under the constitution.Many other women started to gather once the news spread. “Soon we were 100 women along with the men, telling the official to go back. The lekhpal didn’t even dare to step out of the car,” said Shyamkali Devi, a resident of Devari.Women from Koraon Tehsil in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, protesting against the proposed nuclear power project in their area on October 10, 2026. Photo: Indra Shekhar Singh.“They even tried to go off-road, but we stopped them. We can’t afford to lose our land. The officials have lied to us about NTPC – no one told us this is going to be a nuclear plant. They are trying to steal our lands,” Dhanadevi, a resident of Devari, said.“We heard that this would be a thermal project, like in nearby Meja or Kohdarghat,” said Dhanadevi. “No one told us of this nuclear technology and it’s harmful affects on agriculture.”The villagers know that farmers near Meja NTPC and Kohdarghat are affected by the coal-based plants, but their farming activities were not halted altogther. “In our case, our water will dry up or become radiated. We are being misled,” added Dhanadevi, expressing the concerns of the local residents of these villages.They say they cannot believe that the Union government has decided to take over their land for the project right before Uttar Pradesh heads for elections, in early 2027.The proposed nuclear plantThe proposed nuclear power plant – a project of NTPC Parmanu Urja Nigam Limited or NPUNL, a wholly owned nuclear-energy subsidiary of the public sector unit established in January 2025 – is proposed to come up over 1,600 hundred acres of land in the area, of which about 141 hectares is reserve forest (the equivalent of close to 200 football fields), reveal official documents reviewed by this reporter for The Wire. NTPC has sought details from the authorities at Prayagraj of where such a land expanse is available and, as is evident from the paperwork reviewed, Devari-Latifpur has been selected as one of the proposed sites for a new nuclear power plant. The villagers’ anxieties began mounting as they realised that the plant was nuclear energy based, something they say they were not informed about earlier. Their other concern is the extent of land loss they will face.NTPC’s preliminary information form to the administration requests, among other things, details of the number of houses and people who live within the proposed plant area, the population within 5 km and, separately, the population within 16 km of the proposed project.The note from NTPC seeks demographic details, which the administration has filled in in its response.The residents of both villages are overwhelmingly Dalit, most of them belonging to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, and all strongly oppose the plan. They have not only been blocking the roads, but have organised themselves into a group – the Nuclear-Mukt Koraon Samiti (NKMS) or Nuclear-Free Koraon Committee – which has sent letters and petitions to Chief Minister Adityanath, the local legislator Rajmani Kol (Koraon) of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Prayagraj MP, Ujjwal Raman Singh of the Congress party.They have also organised a signature campaign against the proposed project, which 192 residents had signed by Saturday, October 17.In a letter sent on October 17, 2026, to Ujjwal Raman Singh, Prayagraj MP, local resident Ram Chandra, writing on behalf of the (NMKS), seeks his support for their demands of the government:Relocate the nuclear power plant to a less densely populated area.Conduct public stakeholder consultations.Commission an independent, third-party environmental audit.Assess the impact and risks to the River Ganga and Prayagraj city.Conduct a socioeconomic and spiritual impact assessment of the project.Ensure that the local police do not use violence against residents.The letter from Nuclear-Free Koraon Committee seeking Congress MP Ujjwal Pratap Singh’s support for their demand that NTPC finds another site for this project.When contacted, Raman Singh assured his support for the protesters’ demands. He said, “Any radiation leak in the future in this area, as happened in Japan or Chernobyl, will threaten people in our high population density area. And it will be a disaster for the Ganga River and her ecosystem as well.”Raman Singh said that Prayagraj is home to several spiritual sites. For that reason as well, out of respect for people’s sentiments, the Union government should not build this project at the proposed location.He said that the government should also reconsider building a nuclear plant in a region where the residents are largely Dalit or belong to a backward class. “The government should realise that they will be evicted if this project goes through,” he said.He was echoing the sentiments of a local resident, Shri Pal, who told this reporter, “We are so close to the River Ganga that if something goes wrong here, the Kumbh and Prayagraj will be destroyed forever. Densely populated areas, such as Manda and Koraon Tehsil itself, will suffer tremendously in case of a tragedy. We also cannot risk our religious centres for private profits. We will live without electricity, but we will not harm our sacred sites.”Wednesday’s sit-in protest by the women and men of these villages was the second time in October that locals have resisted a so-called survey team from NTPC’s nuclear energy arm. The teams, locals say, have been trying to collect soil samples and drill borewells in the area. The documents confirm that it does seek to dig 10 borewells in Devari village.Villagers take back permissionThis reporter also spoke with Babulesh Kumar, the headman of Belvaniya, a nearby village, who said, “Earlier, I had given an approval under pressure, but now I regret it, and am sending a formal letter to rescind the permission and no-objection certificate. I stand with the people of my village.”A formal letter from the Gram Pradhan of Belvaniya Panchayat in the Koraon block of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh, addressed to the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. The letter says: ‘Within the jurisdiction of our Gram Panchayat Belvaniya, in the villages of Latifpur and Jamohra, I disagree with the survey and installation-related work being carried out by NTPC for a nuclear power plant.’The letter Babulesh Kumar has sent to Chief Minister Adityanath on October 17, 2026, states:Within the jurisdiction of our Gram Panchayat Belvaniya, in the villages of Latifpur and Jamohra, I disagree with the survey and installation-related work being carried out by NTPC for a nuclear power plant.Therefore, I respectfully request that, keeping the interests of my village and its residents in mind, I have taken this decision at my own discretion. I request you to kindly direct the concerned officials to stop the nuclear power plant project.The approval he is referring to is a letter he sent to the subdivisional magistrate of Koroan on September 10, 2026, for conducting surveys and soil testing on Belvaniya panchayat land. They have even registered a complaint on the Chief Minister’s portal, which accepts such grievances.Note that Devari, Jamohra, Latifpur and Belvaniya are very closely located villages. Most fall within a 3–5-km radius of each other. Further, the Belvaniya panchayat presides over Jamohra, Latifpur and Belvaniya itself, whereas Devari falls in the Bhawani Pur panchayat of the adjacent Manda Block.NTPC has, so far, not conducted any public meeting or consultations regarding the project, say the villagers, nor has compliance with land acquisition norms been discussed with the locals. An email has been sent to NTPC with detailed questions, and this story will be updated when a response is received.The fear that the Union government will use violence to coerce them into submission is also growing within the residents of Devari and Latifpur. “An NTPC official said that they will be coming back on October 25 with police force and then we can’t stop them. So we are very scared for our lives and our children,” said Nanda Devi from Latifpur village.The SHANTI ActIn December 2025, the SHANTI Act passed into law, allowing for private sector participation in the nuclear sector. It was done as part of India’s ambitious Rs 20,000-crore Nuclear Energy Mission, which targets at least five indigenous small reactors by 2033.The rules governing financial responsibility if a nuclear accident occurs were relaxed under the SHANTI Act. While plant operators face strict and no-fault liability, the law no longer gives them a route to hold a supplier financially accountable for defective equipment, unless a contract specifically provides for it.The draft SHANTI rules, which were released in August 2026, also propose that the government can appoint an expert group every five years to review the liability limits and recommend whether they should change.The new rules have triggered a scramble for developing nuclear power plants across India. For instance, recent reports say that Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) started discussions with Reliance and Adani companies to commercialise its indigenous 300-MW small reactor, for their large-scale development across the country.Further, NTPC itself is reportedly studying the feasability of nuclear power projects in more states in order to reduce the country’s carbon footprint and to expand its non-fossil fuel energy capacity to 2 GW by 2032. According to a recent report in the Indian Express, such feasability studies have been completed in Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Bihar and it is looking out for more destinations to locate such plants.Nuclear power in rural UP?Evidently in line with these policy adjustments, state-owned NTPC has reached out to the Prayagraj administration about the proposed development in Koraon, detailing its plans and sharing a layout for a nuclear power plant in the vicinity of Devari-Latifpur. This reporter has reviewed a copy of the letter sent by NTPC to the “additional district magistrate (Namami Ganga)/Special Land Acquisition Officer (Prayagraj)” detailing these plans and the layout. The letter confirms both the nuclear proposal and that about 141 hectares of reserve forest land fall within the exclusion zone of the project. NTPC says in the letter that it has changed its earlier project plan and now no longer intends to directly construct on those 141 hectares of reserved forest. However, the letter says that the forest may remain within the project’s exclusion zone.An exclusion zone is where certain activities will not be allowed. That is, this 141-hectare area around the reactor is where public access, habitation and other activities will have to be restricted (usually for safety reasons, in the context of a nuclear power plant).This is what has the residents of Devari and Latifpur villages up in arms.Accompanying the letter are maps and plans of Devari village, one of them detailing where the 10 borewells planned to be dug up in the village are to be located. (See below)A schematic layout of Devari village in Prayagraj district, with the position of borewells marked on them.A map of Devari (Google Earth labels it Dewri) village, Manda Tehsil, where the borewells are to be dug.What has made locals angry?Locals fear not only losing access to the reserve forest area but also suspect that a much wider area around the nuclear power plant – several kilometres beyond the 141 hectares mentioned in the letter above – will be denied to them once it starts coming up.This fear does not appear to be unfounded, as the NTPC letter specifically requests for land – about 100 acres of it – for constructing a residential colony. It says that this land should be between 5 and 15 km away from the proposed nuclear plant.Residents from several villages in Koraon Tehsil in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, protesting against the proposed nuclear power project in their area, on October 10, 2026. Photo: Indra Shekhar Singh.Meanwhile since October 10, more and more people have kept turning up as the protest goes on. Chote Lal, a resident of Latifpur, said, “We have also told our pradhan, but he is being forced by district administration. We have been farming here for generations. Where do we go?”As the crowds swell, people chant unitedly that they don’t want the nuclear power plant in rural Prayagraj. The district should be kept nuclear-free, they say. Yet fear runs amuck in the region, as no officials have come to hold conversations with the protesting residents.Indra Shekhar Singh is an independent journalist, agri-policy analyst and writer.