Residents of Nagepur, a village in Varanasi adopted by local MP Narendra Modi, have expressed support for a demolition-threatened Gandhian institute whose appeal for an audience with the Prime Minister has so far remained unanswered.

Nagepur witnessed a daylong dharna on Saturday in solidarity with the Sarva Sewa Sangh branch in Varanasi, with villagers declaring they would remind Modi about “his responsibilities as head of government and MP from Varanasi”.

“The Modi government wants to remove the Sangh from here with an ulterior motive,” Mukesh Kumar, Nagepur resident and chief of the local panchayat samiti, was quoted as saying to reporters on Sunday.

The district administration last month declared that the institute — the Varanasi branch of the Wardha-based Sarva Sewa Sangh — stood on 14 acres of railway land. The railways then pasted demolition notices on the institute’s buildings on June 27.

The institute, which says it has documents proving the land had been bought from the railways in 1960 through the efforts of Vinoba Bhave and with the approval of then President Rajendra Prasad, unsuccessfully sought an audience with Modi during his July 7-8 Varanasi visit.

The Supreme Court has asked the authorities not to act before it hears the Sangh’s petition on July 10.

“We held a dharna on Saturday in Nagepur, which Modi had adopted to develop it as a model village after he won from Varanasi in 2014,” Kumar told reporters.

“Modi definitely did some work here: he repaired roads, built a community centre and started a few self-help groups. But the way he is targeting the Sangh is not acceptable to us Nagepur residents, who believe in Gandhi’s ideology.”

He said the villagers frequently visited the Sangh.

Sangh member Saurabh Singh, who spoke to The Telegraph over the phone from Varanasi, said: “Initially, the government wanted to grab the three buildings of the Gandhi Vidya Sansthan, which Jayaprakash Narayan had set up on the Sangh compound in the 1960s.

“But as we moved Allahabad High Court, the state government turned vindictive and declared that the Sangh land belonged to the railways, which has decided to bulldoze all the 10 buildings here.”

The high court had denied relief to the Sangh, prompting it to approach the apex court.

Singh said: “Nagepur was not a politically conscious village before 2014 but became so after Modi adopted it. Villagers now know about the ideologies of Gandhi and (Hindutva ideologue) V.D. Savarkar and also know who is genuine and who is not.

“They can make out that while crores of rupees were earmarked for the development of the village, only a few lakh rupees were actually spent. The village still faces problems with sewers and power supply.”

Weeks earlier, Nagepur had held a dharna to pressure Modi to order the arrest of BJP parliamentarian and outgoing Wrestling Federation of India president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, whom women wrestlers have accused of sexual harassment. Brij Bhushan remains free.

“Modi didn’t listen to us at that time. Let’s see when he starts thinking about the common man,” Nandlal Master, a villager who had convened the dharna, told reporters.

Over 100 elderly Gandhians from across India have since end-June been holding daily dharnas outside the Sangh gates against the demolition plan.