Ramesh wants Polavaram dam height reduced

Four months after issuing a notice to the Andhra Pradesh government on south India’s biggest dam project, Polavaram, environment minister Jairam Ramesh wants the height of the dam to be reduced. He seeks to end confrontation between Andhra and its two of its neighbouring states — Orissa and Chhattisgarh.

Updated on: Mar 6, 2011, 23:13:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Four months after issuing a notice to the Andhra Pradesh government on south India’s biggest dam project, Polavaram, environment minister Jairam Ramesh wants the height of the dam to be reduced. He seeks to end confrontation between Andhra and its two of its neighbouring states — Orissa and Chhattisgarh.

The state government has decided to retain the 150-ft height for the dam of the Polavaram project, which many believe can lead to submergence of villages in naxal-struck Malkangiri in Orissa and Dantewada in Chhattisgarh.

The decision taken on recommendation of a nine-member committee by Preetam Singh, former chairman of the Central Water Commission (CWC), has irked the two state governments, who alleged they were not consulted before deciding to increase the height by about 60 meters.

Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh in a letter to Ramesh had complained that increasing the height would lead to submergence of large areas in Dantewada as opposed to the environment clearance condition that only four villages will be affected.

The four-page letter also says that Chhattisgarh was not consulted before the decision and that such suo motu decision can complicate the naxal problem in the state. Orissa has also lodged a similar complaint.

Public hearing is required, in 12 villages in the two states, as per the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) rules.

Although Ramesh told Rajya Sabha on Friday that the dam was accorded clearance in July 2010 with conditions but admitted that as per his understanding the three states had agreed to increase the height.

Ramesh said, “I will soon call a meeting of the three states to sort out the issue…To me, the solution is reducing the height of the 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

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