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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Fresh trouble for Lavasa by Michael Gonsalves

Fresh trouble for Lavasa by Michael Gonsalves

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published Published on Jun 13, 2011   modified Modified on Jun 13, 2011

Fresh trouble is brewing for India’s largest high profile Lavasa Lake City project near Pune, undertaken by Mumbai-based Hindustan Construction (HCC), as Maharashtra government is going to file a stringent environmental violation case against it in Pune court this week.

“After consulting the legal department on Monday, we will file a case against Lavasa Corporation for violating the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, and other breaches,” Valsa Nair-Singh, secretary, department of environment, government of Maharashtra, told Financial Chronicle. She said prima facie the company had illegally carried out construction activity and development work in 681 hectares out of 2,000 hectares of the first phase of the township project on the pristine lap of the magnificent Sahyadri range.
 
“After filing the case, we will send a detailed compliance report to the environment ministry,” Nair-Singh said. She said the department had received the June 10 ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) letter asking them to take necessary action against Lavasa under the environment protection act.

The fate of the controversial Phase I project involving 2,000 hectares will be known on June 15 when the Bombay high court will hear the union environment ministry’s decision.

“We don’t want to comment on MoEF’s letter,” a HCC spokesperson said. Earlier, Ajit Gulabchand, HCC’s chairman and managing director, had welcomed MoEF’s expert appraisal committee’s conditional approval to the phase-I of the project with many riders.

“Our stand has been vindicated and the Maharashtra government should demolish the illegal constructions and developments carried out by Lavasa Corporation with the patronage of state political leaders,” Medha Patkar, prominent activist of Narmada Bachao Andolan, crusading against the project told Financial Chronicle.

“When the kaccha or pucca houses of the poor are demolished by the government without thinking twice, why it should hesitate to pull down a host of illegal buildings,” she asked.

Patkar said the environment ministry should never give further permission for any development work.

“As a last resort, the government could manage it for public use but the company should not be permitted to use it commercially,” she said.

The company spokesperson said all the developed units of the phase-I project had been sold out.

“In summer, the tourism activity at the Lavasa city built on the banks of the Warasgaon Dam Reservoir Lake was brisk with increasing in footfalls and attracting more on the weekends,” he said.

Earlier Gulabchand, chairman of Lavasa Corporation, had told this paper that the company has been losing nearly Rs 2 crore daily since November 25, 2010 stay order of MoEF on the project.

The company has claimed that it had invested Rs 4,000 crore on the project. It would also attract an additional Rs 40,000 crore investment in 10 years, Gulabchand had said.

Most of the 10,000 workers engaged at the site had been rendered jobless since the stay order.

The Financial Chronicle, 12 June, 2011, http://www.mydigitalfc.com/news/fresh-trouble-lavasa-578


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