Goa moves Jairam against NHAI

The Goa government has provided ammunition to the environment ministry to act against the road highways ministry with the state environment minister Aleixo Sequeira seeking suspension of the environment clearance given to a highway connecting three states for "misrepresentation" of facts.

Updated on: Sep 1, 2010, 24:35:08 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Goa government has provided ammunition to the environment ministry to act against the road highways ministry with the state environment minister Aleixo Sequeira seeking suspension of the environment clearance given to a highway connecting three states for "misrepresentation" of facts.

The National Highway Authority of India, which comes under the road transport ministry headed by Kamal Nath, is set to widen NH-4 between Belgam-Anmod-Panaji.

The project, connecting Karnataka, Maharashtra and Goa, is stuck because of stiff resistance by several villages along the highway in Goa.

The state has accused the authority of providing incorrect information during the public hearing for the project. "Information given regarding land acquisition during EPH (environment public hearing) is very much different from what is sought to be acquired," Sequeira said in a letter to Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh.

The state found a huge anomaly in the land required for the project in two different sets of NHAI documents. The Centre in its notification asked for three times the land the Goa Pollution Control Board had conducted the public hearing for.

"The dimensions of land required for the same project in two separate documents of the NHAI are different," Sequeira said.

Goa has alleged that this disparity is just one of the "misrepresentation of facts done by NHAI".

"This has agitated the local people who are now living with fear of losing their establishments and dwellings units without a proper plan of rehabilitation," the letter said.

Sequeira said he suspected the NHAI obtained the clearance by not presenting true facts about their activities proposed on the ground.

"In the given background of events and the agitation that my department is facing from the people affected, I would urge you to hold in abeyance the EC granted, till such time the correct information is provided to the MoEF," the letter read.

Ramesh has asked his ministry officials to look into it and take appropriate action.

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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