Rs 2.86 per square feet.

This is what the state will pay people in coastal Konkan in return for their farmland, which it wants to use as a site for a nuclear power plant at Jaitapur.

Opposition to the project is mounting. The potential PAPs, or project-affected people, say they don’t want the compensation, and they don’t want to give away their land.

And activists are calling the series of mega projects planned for the Konkan “exploitation of the land, the sea and the locals.”

On Monday — one day before the state was to distribute cheques to locals of Madban, one of the five Konkan villages to be acquired for the Jaitapur project — about 200 activists demonstrated at Azad Maidan near Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.

“We don’t want these cheques at the cost of ruining the environment,” said Satyajit Chavan, a Madban local who plans to protest outside Mantralaya.

“We oppose the setting up of thermal power plants in the Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg regions of the Konkan, and the nuclear power plant at Jaitapur.

“They are converting creeks and oceans into ash ponds,” said Girish Raut, an advocate and environmentalist.

Activists also warn that a nuclear plant in this region, in the event of a Chernobyl-like disaster, would have a radiation fallout zone that would include Mumbai and Goa.

“The state wants to go ahead with land acquisition even before the Environment Impact Assessment is done,” Raut said.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India has proposed a 9500 MW atomic power plant at Jaitapur – activists say this makes bad sense in Ratnagiri district (where Jaitapur is located), which has seen 93 big tremors in the last 20 years.

A Rght To Information application has found that 12 more power projects are likely to come up in Ratnagiri.

“Instead of trying to meet increasing demand, why is the government not focusing on conserving electricity by encouraging the use of energy saving devices?” Raut suggested.

Also part of the protest were RTI activist G R Vora, Vaishali Patil, and Arun Vilaskar of Konkan Bachao Samiti. They also opposed Raigad’s planned bauxite mines and Special Economic Zone.