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Amnesia symptom in Naveen's anti-dam cry


An inter-state tussle triggered by a national issue has brought to light how amnesia has afflicted the Orissa government.

Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik had demanded three days ago that a public hearing should be held in villages that will be affected by the proposed Polavaram hydel project in neighbouring Andhra.

Documents available with The Telegraph suggest that the same Naveen government had a year ago rejected a request by Andhra to organise a public hearing in the Orissa villages expected to get inundated if the hydel project comes through. (See chart)

Between May 2009 — when Andhra sent the request — and last Thursday — when Naveen said “public hearing must take place because we have to consider the requirements of local people” — a key change had taken place in the development discourse in the country.

The Congress had decided to make a tribal-friendly policy one of its key planks and the Vedanta mining project, blessed by the Orissa government, became the most high-profile casualty.

Naveen then found his answer in the Polavaram plant, pursued by the Congress government in Andhra, which appears to have resulted in the neat somersault. The Andhra government has already made it clear that there was no question of holding a survey now.

According to the documents, in reply to the letter from the Andhra Pradesh government on May 8, 2009, for a hearing, the Orissa State Pollution Control Board had said it would not be “prudent” to hold such a hearing as the matter was sub-judice. It had also said the Andhra government had not deposited the requisite “public hearing fees”.

The Orissa pollution board’s reply to the Andhra principal secretary of irrigation said the environmental clearance granted to the project on October 25, 2005, by the Centre was quashed in December 2007 by the National Environment Appellate Authority (NEAA). The authority ordered public hearings in the affected areas of Orissa and Chhattisgarh.

The Andhra government challenged this directive in the high court, which issued an interim stay.

Later, the government of Chhattisgarh, where considerable areas could be submerged because of the Polavaram dam, had approached the Supreme Court to have the matter transferred from the high court. The matter is now pending before the apex court.

Citing these reasons, the Orissa pollution board turned down the Andhra government’s request to hold public hearings in the project-affected areas of the state.

But the plea from the Andhra principal secretary cited an environment ministry letter that proposed public hearings in the state and Chhattisgarh over the proposed embankments on Sabari and Sileru rivers while claiming that eight villages in Malkangiri district would be affected if protective embankments were not formed.

Enclosing documents like the environment impact assessment (EIA) and the environment management plan (EMP), the Andhra government requested the board to make arrangements for conducting public hearings in the affected areas of Orissa and submit minutes of the meeting to the ministry “at an early date”.

The Orissa government is yet to publicly acknowledge the exchange of letters between the two states.

However, the question of public hearings assumed fresh significance last week when the Union environment ministry sent a letter to Andhra. The letter asked why a showcause should not be issued to the Andhra government for continuing work on the project without public hearings in Orissa and Chhattisgarh.

The ministry said after the project received environment clearance in 2005, several proposals — such as embankments on the tributaries of Godavari, over which the Rs 10,000-crore power project is being constructed — were mooted.

Naveen, who had targeted the hydel project soon after Rahul Gandhi waded into tribal territory in Orissa and projected himself as a “sipahi” to protect the interests of the disadvantaged community, has now seized on this letter.

But his Andhra counterpart K. Rosaiah appears equally belligerent. “How can we conduct a public hearing in those states? We have already taken adequate measures to prevent submergence of land in those states,” Rosaiah said.

The environment ministry’s latest letter has put the onus of conducting public hearing, in the changed context, on the Andhra government.