Govt mulls panel to check impact of dams on Ganga

The government is mulling over setting up a committee to examine the ecological impact of hydel projects being taken up on Himalayan water bodies, including the Ganga. This move comes amid a demand by Hindu leaders to halt projects on the river, failing which a nationwide stir would be launched. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 18, 2012, 23:34:44 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government is mulling over setting up a committee to examine the ecological impact of hydel projects being taken up on Himalayan water bodies, including the Ganga. This move comes amid a demand by Hindu leaders to halt projects on the river, failing which a nationwide stir would be launched.

Around 22 hydel projects — small and big — are in different stages of implementation across Uttarakhand. Protests have been taken up by groups favouring as well as opposing them.

Avdash Kushal, a Dehradun-based NGO activist who is campaigning for the hydel projects, alleged that the ones opposing it were being supported by the United States. "Hydel power projects are being opposed so that India would buy uranium on American terms," he said.

Meanwhile, the government is considering asking Planning Commission member BK Chaturvedi to head a committee to examine the possible ecological impact of several projects coming up on the Ganga. This comes in the wake of protests by environmental groups against an IIT report that partially supported the hydel projects.

The report had suggested that though the scope of many projects on the Ganga could be reduced to ensure sustainability of aquatic life, they should not be scrapped completely.

“We want all the projects to be scrapped,” said Shankaracharya Swaroopana-nda Saraswati at a meet in Jantar Mantar, Delhi, which saw the participation of various organisations from Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.

In 2010, the government had scrapped the hydel projects of Pala Maneri (480 MW), Bhaironghait (381 MW) and Lohari Nagpala (600MW) projects, but refused to act against others. "The decision (to scrap the three projects) was based on unscientific facts and superstitious beliefs," Kushal said.

Other social activists, such as Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asian Network of Dams, Rivers and People, believe that building dams on Himalayan rivers have damaged the local ecology and — hence — no more projects of the kind should be allowed. A senior official said the government wants to constitute the committee only after taking cognisance of every viewpoint on the issue.

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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