Gujarat's bid to build Patel's statue faces green hurdle

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi's bid to build the world's tallest statue - of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel - on the Narmada river may face an environment ministry roadblock as the project work has begun without mandatory environmental clearances.

Updated on: Nov 8, 2013, 17:13:22 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi's bid to build the world's tallest statue - of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel - on the Narmada river may face an environment ministry roadblock as the project work has begun without mandatory environmental clearances.

In June Modi had sought pieces of iron from farmers across India to build the gigantic statue, which he named the Statute of Unity, planned to be 182 metres high -- four times New York's Statue of Liberty, which stands 46 metres tall. The project is part of Modi's plan to galvanise people across India in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections next year.

The entire project - also including a memorial, visitor centre, garden, hotel, convention centre, amusement park and research institute - is estimated to cost Rs 2,500 crore.

It has now emerged that the Gujarat government did not seek statutory approvals from the Centre's environment ministry for the grand project, and started preparatory work it near the Sardar Sarovar Dam.

"This is clearly illegal," says a letter by a group of environmentalists from Gujarat and other states to environment secretary V Rajagopalan. They say that laying of the foundation stone for the project and starting the work without social and environmental impact assessments violates the Environment Protection Act, 1986.

"We are looking into the issue," a senior environment ministry official said. The ministry will decide in a couple of days whether to send an inquiry team to Gujarat or issue a notice to the state government.

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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