NGT stops land acquisition for Renuka Dam

The National Green Tribunal today ordered an interim stay on land acquisition process by Himachal Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (HPPCL) for Renuka Dam Project in the state's Sirmaur district.

Updated on: Jul 28, 2011, 21:15:59 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a blow to Renuka Dam in Himachal, the National Green Tribunal on Wednesday asked the state government to stop construction and acquisition of the land for construction the dam in Sirmaur district.

The tribunal was hearing a petition filed by affected person Durga Ram, who had challenged the environment clearance given to the project in October 2009. However, former Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh in 2010 had refused to give forest clearance to the project despite a ministry committee approving the project.

The petitioner had claimed that the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report for the project was inadequate and there were several discrepancies in the total areas to be acquired for the project and the families likely to be affected.

The EIA report, the environment clearance (EC) letter and the affidavit filed by HPPCL in the court had three different sets of data.

While the EC was granted for 1,477 hectares of land the state government now claims that the total land required for the project will be 2,239 hectares. Similarly the EIA states that only 308 families will be directly affected by the project whereas the state government puts this figure at more than 1000.

Despite the forest clearance not granted, the state government’s agencies were carrying out land acquisition. Water from Renuka Dam is to be provided to Delhi for its drinking water needs but the project envisaged in early 1990s have got stuck because of resistance by locals.

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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