Extortion case against whistleblower

Four days after the losing a 2,400 MW power plant in Chhattisgarh, Jindal Power Limited has registered a case of extortion against Ramesh Aggarwal, on whose complaint the project was scrapped.

Updated on: Jun 26, 2010, 24:39:57 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Four days after the losing a 2,400 MW power plant in Chhattisgarh, Jindal Power Limited has registered a case of extortion against Ramesh Aggarwal, on whose complaint the project was scrapped.

Raigarh police on Wednesday lodged a case of extortion against Aggarwal, after the company’s senior General Manager Sanjeev Chauhan alleged that Aggarwal had demanded Rs five crore, in front of two locals, for not creating a ruckus at a public hearing in May.

The public hearing was for the 2,400 MW project for which the ministry had approved terms of reference (TOR) in March 2009 for obtaining clearance.

Aggarwal had written to Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh alleging that the plant’s construction had started at an alternate site, even before the clearance process began.

The ministry’s team found that allegation to be true in an inspection conducted this month and withdrew its TOR as first reported by HT on June 21.

Aggarwal got a shock when police came to investigate a case of extortion against him. “I will fight the case,” Aggarwal said. “If I had demanded money the company should have got a case registered against me immediately. Why they waited till the environment ministry’s action?”

Jindal Power Limited did not respond to HT queries.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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