Holding placards and banners, the activists participated in the `rally to hate' SEZs by raising slogans against the Centre and the State Governments that were `acting as agents of different corporate houses forgetting the interests of the farmers and the poor'.

The rally that was organised by the Orissa unit of the Communist Party of India (M-L) also

condemned the killing of innocent villagers at Nandigram in West Bengal on March 14.

The demonstrators burnt an effigy of West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to register their protest against his government's policy to facilitate setting up of SEZ projects.

A copy of the SEZ Act was also burnt at the rally.

The poor rehabilitation and resettlement of the millions of the people displaced in the past across the State was severely criticised by the speakers who addressed the rally.

No government should try to hand over agricultural land for use by industrial houses for setting up of SEZs and other mineral-based industries, they warned.

`Time has come for the politicians to realise why people were ready to die than to be displaced,' they pointed out.

`The spontaneous protests by the people against different industries at Nandigram, Kashipur, Lanjigarh, Kalinga Nagar and other places should not be taken lightly by those running the governments.'