Tanga Byaling, who currently holds the working president's role within the Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee and has a prior record of ministerial service, on Friday disputed the assertion from BJP leaders that the Congress party had been wielding the proposed Siang Upper Multipurpose Project as a political instrument.

At a gathering held at Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan in Itanagar, Byaling addressed remarks made by Rajya Sabha MP Tai Tagak and cabinet minister Nyato Dukam, stating that the Congress party was fulfilling its role as the Opposition by voicing the concerns of indigenous communities in Siang and Upper Siang districts over how the proposed project could affect their land, livelihoods, and cultural identity.

Four areas drew his criticism of the state government's handling: community consent, support for those displaced, protection of the surrounding environment, and matters tied to national security.

Drawing on the dam project's background, Byaling noted that communities facing displacement had voiced opposition to the proposed reservoir structure when Nabam Tuki was serving as chief minister. According to his account, the Congress government then in power had raised these concerns with the Centre and put forward the idea of pursuing smaller run-of-the-river hydropower schemes as a way to limit the extent of land submergence and the displacement of communities.

Byaling put a direct question to the state government: why had the memorandum of understanding been signed before social and environmental impact assessments were carried out and before communities likely to be affected had been consulted? Answers to what the submerged zone would cover, how many villages and households stood to lose their homes, and what steps the government intended to take on rehabilitation, resettlement, and restoring livelihoods were among the details he pressed for.

Byaling argued that monetary payments fall short of what is truly lost when roughly 27 villages face flooding or displacement — namely, the ancestral land, traditional governance structures, and deep-rooted connections to the river that no financial settlement can restore.

Byaling also put forward reservations about a Rs 350 crore package intended to fund special development and livelihood support tied to the project. Contending that the funds were being deployed to sway communities and obtain individual memoranda of understanding in favour of the pre-feasibility report, he called for an independent body to examine how the money had been allocated, who had received it, and how payments had been made. No independent confirmation of the claims has been obtained.

At an October 13 gathering where Chief Minister Pema Khandu met with representatives from various organisations and local youth groups, Byaling noted that calls had reportedly been put forward for paramilitary units to be pulled out of the affected areas and for charges against those who had protested the SUMP scheme to be dropped. He called for the government to examine charges brought against those who protested peacefully and to put in place the conditions needed for open, good-faith dialogue.

Byaling raised doubts about whether national security genuinely underpinned the government's rationale for the project. Technical and hydrological documentation — covering a reservoir whose storage capacity has been put at 11,500 million cubic metres — formed the basis of his request for answers about how the planned facility would respond to the downstream implications of a hydropower scheme under development by China on the Yarlung Tsangpo. Questions were also raised about accounts indicating that SUMP's planned output had shifted from 3,750 MW to 11,500 MW.

Among the measures Byaling put forward were thorough safety reviews of dam infrastructure, structured plans for managing flood-related emergencies, and alert networks designed to give communities along the river corridors of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam advance notice of potential hazards. Questions about upfront payments allegedly tied to earlier hydropower memoranda of understanding were also raised by him, with a call for those dealings to be made more transparent.

Byaling took issue with Dukam's reported position on central funding dependency, arguing that federal financial transfers to the state ought not to serve as grounds for placing outsized burdens on indigenous communities. He also called on residents to keep the peace and pressed for open consultations between the government and the landowners and communities most directly affected by the project before any decisions are reached.