25 years later, Uttarakhand power projects haunts environment ministry

25 years after the environment ministry cleared the controversial Srinagar hydro-power plant, the Uttarakhand high court has asked the ministry to decide, within three months, whether the height of the dam can be increased from 63 to 90 meters. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 23, 2011, 21:07:31 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

25 years after the environment ministry cleared the controversial Srinagar hydro-power plant, the Uttarakhand high court has asked the ministry to decide, within three months, whether the height of the dam can be increased from 63 to 90 meters.

The court has also asked the project proponents not to construct the dam beyond 63 meters, for which the ministry gave approval in 1985 to the then Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board.

The clearance was transferred to the Alakananda Hydro-Power Corporation in 1999, when the project design was changed to increase the height to 90 meters and capacity to 330 MW. The company claimed that in the transfer letter the ministry gave approval to the enhanced capacity, but the letter did not mention any change in scope of the project.

The court, however, struck down the contention claiming that the ministry's transfer letter did not mention clearance for additional capacity and citied an order of the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) of the Supreme Court.

The CEC had said asked the ministry to consider, whether in the case of the Srinagar power project, revised clearance was required or not, because of change in scope of the project. The ministry had, however, taken no action resulting in the high court order. It had also taken months to file an affidavit in the court on whether it approved the project up to 90 meters.

Srinagar hydro-project is on the river Alakananda, which joins the Bhagirathi at Devprayag to form the Ganga. Although the central government, under stewardship of environment minister Jairam Ramesh, had cancelled hydro projects on the river Bhagirathi, it had refused to take cognizance of similar projects on the Alakananda river.

"They (environment ministry) are not even discussing it," said Bharat Jhununwala, who has been fighting to save the ecology on river Alakananda because of hydro projects.

The Srinagar project was conceived in 1981 and the construction started only in 2007. Part of the dam constructed is above 63 meters and rest is below the environment clearance limit.

While the Uttarakhand high court refused to grant stay on construction of the dam up to 63 meters, it asked the project proponents to stop the work for construction above 63 meters.

Following the court's order, the ministry may have to conduct an environment clearance process, as increasing the height of the dam will have a greater impact on the ecology than considered, when approval for 63 meters was given.

The ministry's own order of 2004 says that fresh clearance will have to be taken if scope of the project is changed, which has been the case in Srinagar project.

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

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk Hunger Strike LIVE and more across India.