Ramesh saved Damra project

Damra Port project in Orissa escaped action as environment minister Jairam Ramesh took a lenient view despite his officials pointing out flaws in the clearance granted in 2000.

Updated on: Jan 30, 2011, 01:25:23 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Damra Port project in Orissa escaped action as environment minister Jairam Ramesh took a lenient view despite his officials pointing out flaws in the clearance granted in 2000.

The project is a joint venture between Tata Steel and L&T.

“Had the construction (of the port) not commenced, we could have taken a decision unequivocally not to let the project proceed at the site whose forest status is disputed,” Ramesh said in a file noting in September 2010, overruling the view that action should be initiated against the project proponents.

The Damra project got environmental clearance in 2000 from the surface transport ministry, which then had powers to clear minor projects.

The Tata Group said they have nothing to do with the clearance, as it was taken by then project proponent International Sea Port Ltd, which later withdrew. Tata Steel entered the picture only in 2004 when it signed an agreement with L&T.

S. Mahapatra of Damra Port said: “As the matter is in court, I will not like to comment. For us, it is not forest land.”

In January 2010, several groups lodged a complaint with the environment ministry saying the project was being developed on land for which no clearance had been taken. Ramesh then ordered an inquiry.

The ministry’s regional office at Bhubaneshwar found that the land was “unsurveyed, unclassified and undemarcated” and as per records, it should have been classified as forest land. The Orissa government strongly refuted the claim of it being forest land, but admitted it was unsurveyed and unclassified.

Accepting the report, Ramesh overruled action on two grounds: First, the port was near completion and second, the goodwill of Tata Group of Companies in corporate social responsibility.

The file noting of September 2010 was the basis of the ministry’s affidavit in Supreme Court — which was already hearing a petition filed by environmental groups in Orissa — for not initiating action.

Convinced there was ambiguity over status of land, Ramesh, however, refrained from blaming his officials. If the project would have come for approval now, the minister made it clear that forest clearance would have been required.

Finally, Ramesh said it was not open and shut case, which has been made worse by the incontrovertible fact that the land used is unsurveyed, unclassified and undemarcated.

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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