Ministry red signal for Jindal power plant

The environment ministry has scrapped a proposal for a mega power plant in Chhattisgarh after finding that the construction of the plant started without its mandatory environment clearance.

Updated on: Jun 21, 2010, 24:39:13 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The environment ministry has scrapped a proposal for a mega power plant in Chhattisgarh after finding that the construction of the plant started without its mandatory environment clearance.

In what appears to be gross irregularity, Jindal Power Limited started work on the 2,400 MW coal-based power plant not at the original site but where a 1,000 MW power plant is already functioning.

The ministry had given environment clearance to the 1,000 MW plant over an area of 62 hectares in June 2009.

Jindal Power Limited had submitted a plan to construct the power plant over 1,041 hectares of land with adequate facility for housing and treating fly ash. The ministry in March 2009 approved terms of reference for getting environment clearance for a proposal in Raigarh district.

As per the norms, first the terms of reference are approved, after which the project proponent has to prepare an environment impact assessment report and get public consultation on the report done, before the ministry considers the proposal for giving clearance.

But instead of submitting an environment impact assessment report, the project proponent allegedly started construction work at an alternate site.

“Constructing a plant in just 62 hectares is not possible,” said PL Ahujarai, a scientist with the ministry, in a letter to Jindal Power. The letter was written this week after a team of ministry officials found the allegations of construction by local NGOs and civil society to be true.

“Further, the ministry has not been informed of the change in location of the plant.”

Terming starting construction work at some other site as gross irregularity, the ministry has also withdrawn the terms of reference for the project, saying that so much land was not available at the specific site for construction of the project.

“It is found that the proposal for setting up the 2,400 MW power plant is premature as there is no area where the proposed plant can be set up,” the letter read.

Jindal Power has been asked to submit a fresh proposal as per the Environment Impact Assessment norms of 2006.

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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