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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Economic Survey gaffe stuns Sangh -Ananthakrishnan G

Economic Survey gaffe stuns Sangh -Ananthakrishnan G

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published Published on Mar 3, 2015   modified Modified on Mar 3, 2015
-The Telegraph

Thiruvananthapuram: The NDA government's economic survey has referred to a stalled airport project in Kerala as a live one, shocking the local Sangh parivar that sees its success in blocking the plan as a feather in its cap.

The Sangh's efforts had led to the National Green Tribunal quashing the previous UPA government's environmental clearance to the private airport project at Aranmula, a Unesco Global Heritage Village in Pathanamthitta district, last summer. The Supreme Court later upheld the ruling.

An embarrassed state BJP has sought to cap the latest controversy by terming the economic survey citation a technical error. But a follow-up statement by the private promoter asserting the airport would be built has further enraged the project's Sangh opponents.

"We have requested finance minister Arun Jaitley to drop the remarks (on the project) from the 2014-15 survey report," said a statement from Kummanan Rajasekharan, senior Sangh pracharak and patron of the Aranmula Heritage Village Protection Council.

It referred to the green tribunal and court rulings to add: "(The) officials who prepared the report did not do so after examining all the papers. Hence the remarks... are unnecessary and irrelevant."

The tribunal blow to the project had handed the Sangh its first big victory in Kerala on the environment front, till then a Left preserve.

Led by Rajasekharan, the Sangh had combined the environmental issues with a heritage angle relating to a nearby temple and local festivals and handicraft. Its success boosted the BJP vote share in Aranmula from 7.06 per cent in 2009 to 15.98 per cent in 2014.

The state BJP, which had backed the protests against the project, is now trying to play it safe.

"The survey report is not a policy document. We have not gone back on our stand and will continue to oppose the project,'' state BJP president V. Muraleedharan said.

He added that Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar had informed the state unit last month that the Centre would not proceed with the project.

The reference to the project appears on page 104 in the sixth chapter of the economic survey, which deals with infrastructure performance and civil aviation.

It says: "The major initiatives to augment better airport infrastructure across the country are... setting up of greenfield airports, namely... Kannur and Arnamula in Kerala; Durgapur in West Bengal...."

Following the report, promoters KGS Aranmula International Airport Limited issued a statement claiming the project had been included in the list of Greenfield airports planned for the financial year 2015-16.

An indignant Rajasekharan said the report was not an order to execute a decision but only the interpretations and studies of some officials.

"It's surprising that the KGS group is trying to portray it as sanction to build the airport,'' he said.

He explained that he was opposed not to the project itself but to the chosen plot --- on the banks of the holy Pamba and a stone's throw from the Parthasarathy (Krishna) temple.

Experts had said the project would require levelling of swathes of paddy fields and some of the river channels, and even force the temple to reduce the height of its ritual flag mast. There was a threat also to the annual boat race, linked to the temple festivities.

Besides, they said, the project would destroy precious clay deposits that are needed to make the renowned Aranmula kannadi, a handmade metal-alloy mirror.

Protests against the project had begun in 2004 when it was first conceived as an airstrip for an engineering college by the then owner of the land. The private airport project received the go-ahead in 2010 from the then Left Democratic Front government, and the central environmental clearance came in 2012.

It was Rajasekharan's entry in 2012 that transformed the agitation.


The Telegraph, 2 March, 2015, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150303/jsp/nation/story_6643.jsp#.VPUiiOFr9U8


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