Uddhav warns Ramesh on Jaitapur

Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh should stop his ‘monkey-tricks’, stop playing with people’s lives and form a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) to probe his knowledge on environmental issues, Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray said in a statement on Saturday. HT reports.

Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh should stop his ‘monkey-tricks’, stop playing with people’s lives and form a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) to probe his knowledge on environmental issues, Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray said in a statement on Saturday.

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Ramesh, who was in Mumbai on Friday, told the press he was not against the Jaitapur project and that it would go ahead. He had earlier raised concerns about its safety, asking for a separate safety system behind each of the six plants at Jaitapur instead of a single interlinked one.

“Just eight days ago the same Jairam Ramesh had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressing his reservations about the environment and safety issues of the project. And now he is saying the opposite, giving the project a green signal. He should stop these money-tricks,” Uddhav added.

Pointing to Ramesh’s flip-flops on environmental decisions, Uddhav added that on the one hand he asked for the demolition of Adarsh because of its environmental violations, but in the case of Jaitapur, where hundreds of people and land are in question, the minister is dilly-dallying.

Warning Ramesh over his decision, Thackeray said, “You will not be on this seat [as environment minister] for long. Yet, your decisions are going to impact the people from the Konkan for generations. The Sena will not spare you if you don’t stop these monkey tricks.”