4 November, 2025
Bengaluru: A fact-finding report on the human rights violations in Honnavar by the All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU), Fridays For Future Karnataka (FFF-K), and People’s Union for Civil Liberties-Karnataka (PUCL-K) was released on 4th November, 2025 at Press Club, Bengaluru. The report, titled ‘‘Eroding Shores, Silenced Protests: A Fact Finding Report of the Honavar Port Project” is a follow-up to a fact- finding conducted earlier to document more recent violations and the bring widest possible attention to the resilience and the demands of the Honnavar fishing community.
Medha Patkar, renowned social activist and founding member of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, launched the report:
What development is and what it is not is a critical question for us to ask when we look at a project like the Honavar Port Project. We all celebrate ‘Water Day’, ‘Earth Day’, ‘Environment Day’, but are we heeding the warnings that thousands of scientists have given us? It is no longer just the indigenous communities, river communities and fishing communities that the current development paradigm ruins, but climate change and global warming threatens all humans, animals and plants with extinction. We need to ask ourselves, if we call this development, then it is development at whose cost, but also whose benefit? Honavar fishing communities are selling fishes not just to neighbouring villages, but dried fishes from Honavar
are sold all across countries in Asia. This too is development, while maintaining dignified women-centric livelihoods. This too is development, but in a way that doesn’t destroy nature.
We have met the Chief Minister today, along the Chief Secretary, Ms. Shalini Rajneesh, the CEO of the Maritime Board and an authority from the Department of Infrastructures and Port. The CM has promised that he would look into the issue and has mentioned that the false FIRs against the fisherfolk of Honavar will be withdrawn.
Rajesh Tandel, president of the fisher workers association, Karavalli Meenugaarara Karmikara Sangha:
Despite opposing the port from the very beginning in 2010, our voices are being deliberately silenced. Earlier this year, the port people, along with the Deputy Collector and police, arrived at our houses to conduct a survey. Due to the trauma caused by the survey, my wife was one of the several women who attempted to commit suicide that day, and she is still mentally disturbed until today because of that incident. They have slapped 32 false cases on me alone so far to intimidate us into submission. DK Shivkumar came to Honavar prior to the elections and promised that they would stand along with the fishing communities of Honnavar, but even one year after coming to power, where are they now? Why don’t they stand with us?
Rihana – community member, Tonka village, Honnavar:
We come from the fishing community. We are hardworking people, and we don’t know any other way of life other than fishing and selling our catch. Abruptly, in 2016, surveyors came in one day with talks of a’project’. They forcibly demolished the area we used to dry fish. This woke us up to the harsh realities this project would inflict on us and our livelihoods. If they relocate us, where would we go? What work would we do?
Mahmud Khoya, community member, Tonka village, Honnavar
Just for questioning why the surveyors were here, they arrested me, along with others, keeping us in custody at a jail in Dharwad for 24 days and slapped multiple false cases on us. Siddaramaiah must live up to the promise he made to us today to relieve the false cases.They have harassed us and tried to make our life a living hell but we are still here fighting.
Background:
Since 2010, when Honnavar Port Private Limited (HPPL) was granted permission to develop a commercial port in Kasarkod, the region has witnessed growing unease and resistance. The port is planned across 44 hectares of land belonging to five fishing villages -Tonka 1, Tonka 2, Pavinkurva, Mallukurva and Honnavar Rural – and the report finds that this has taken place without the informed consent of the local community or adherence to constitutionally mandated environmental safeguards.
There are two components of the development of the port: one, the construction of the port itself (44 hectares), second, the construction of a four-lane four-kilometer road connecting the port to NH66. The report found that the surveys to ascertain ‘encumbrances’ for the road construction were conducted only after the violent repression of peaceful protests against the port project organized by the fishing communities. First, prohibitory orders were issued the night before the survey, under Section 163 BNSS. The next morning, a large number of police officials accompanied company officials to conduct the survey. Community members gathered and raised their voices against the port and road construction, but were met with brutal police violence and unlawful detention. The report also documents that the police were present during the medical examination of victims of police violence and the doctor refused to document injuries from police violence. The harassment and intimidation by police continues in the form of surveillance and deployment of personnel. .
Apart from losing their homes and land to the project, the report found that the construction of the port threatens both the livelihood of the fisherfolk and the ecological balance of the region. The construction of breakwaters will lead to the gradual erosion of the coast itself. The Sharavathi estuary is home to a variety of fish, including prized estuarine species, and the beach serves as a nesting ground for the Olive Ridley Turtle, an endangered and protected species under the Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. .
The report also highlights the lapses in the clearances and approvals obtained by HPPL, and provides an update of the legal proceedings in the NGT and the High Court.
The report calls for accountability of the police for the violence inflicted on peaceful protestors, and the withdrawal of all cases, as they are baseless allegations to silence dissent. The report also calls for the revoking of the Environmental Clearance and permissions for construction of the port project. .
