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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Temple halts hydel project by Tapas Chakraborty

Temple halts hydel project by Tapas Chakraborty

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published Published on Sep 14, 2010   modified Modified on Sep 14, 2010

Dams may have been the temples of modern India to Jawaharlal Nehru, but Uttarakhand’s BJP government has stopped work on a hydel project because priests and devotees fear it might submerge a Kali temple.

The government’s surprise move on Thursday on the 400MW Alakananda project is steeped in local politics and coincides with a countrywide debate on development-versus-environment.

But it also highlights how easy it has become to block power projects in the hill state that gave birth to the Chipko movement against tree felling, and therefore big dams, three decades ago.

The government had abandoned the 480MW Pala Maneri project and the 381 MW Bhairoghanti project in Garhwal last year over environmental concerns. Then last month, the Congress, BJP and yoga guru Baba Ramdev joined hands to have the 600MW Lohari Nag Pala hydel project scrapped.

An experts committee, however, had largely allayed environmental fears around the Alakananda dam — 30km from Garhwal’s Srinagar town — and the protests had died down when construction began five years ago.

The Rs 2,769-crore project, originally approved in 1986 but stalled by green protests till 2005, was 10 months away from completion.

But temple priests and devotees saw their chance when Lohari Nag Pala was scrapped last month.

An army of sadhus invaded Srinagar and protested that the dam would submerge a 17th-century temple to Dhari Devi or Kali, perched on a 20-metre-high rock, which draws lakhs of devotees on Navratri every year.

Now a committee headed by the Garhwal commissioner will report within 15 days whether the dam should be built.

“If this trend continues, Uttarakhand’s dream of becoming the nation’s ‘powerhouse’ would be in ruins,” said Srikant Joshi, a Uttarakhand Kranti Dal leader.

Sources said the real reason for the government decision was that chief minister Pokhriyal wanted to contest the 2012 state polls from Srinagar and did not want public anger to persist over the project.

“The state government has received complaints that the MoU signed with GVK Power of Hyderabad has been tampered with and the temple might go under water,” state power secretary Umakant Panwar said.

A statement by GVK Power, however, said: “We had requested the state government to carry out a probe without stopping work but the work was stopped, it appears, under pressure.”

“We even offered to elevate the position of the temple,” another company official said.

Local people and priests of various temples, however, alleged the dam’s height was raised recently. Company officials denied this, saying the height had always been 66 metres.

A cloud, nevertheless, hangs over all pending hydel projects in Uttarakhand. The state is planning a study by IIT Roorkee and the Wild Life Institute of India to assess the cumulative impact of these projects. “The fate of the projects would depend on the outcome of the study,” a government official said.


The Telegraph, 13 September, 2010, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100914/jsp/nation/story_12933642.jsp


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