Ramesh allows work on MP hydel project

NEW DELHI: Under intense pressure, environment minister Jairam Ramesh on Friday lifted the stop-work order on the construction of the last five spillway gates of the Maheshwar hydel power project in Madhya Pradesh. The sustained pressure on the environment ministry to allow work on the project came from the Prime Minister’s Office, the power ministry, the Madhya Pradesh state government and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh.

Even as he lifted the stop work order, Ramesh made it clear that he was not satisfied with the pace of rehabilitation and resettlement efforts. Neither was his concession going to be unconditional.

“I have no option but to agree to the lifting of the stop-work order on the construction of the last five spillway gates. However, these gates shall not be lowered until satisfactory completion of R&R and its review. The filling up of the reservoir up to 154 metres will be considered after the R&R work has been completed,” the order said.


The final push to lift the stop work order came in the form of the May 4 technical report of the Central Water Commission (CWC). The Commission raised the issue of “safety”, leaving the environment ministry with little choice.

In its report, which was sent to the environment ministry after the PMO took a review of the project on May 2, the Commission recommended the installation of the balance five radial gates “to avoid damage to existing construction in the event of breach of the coffer dam due to monsoon floods.” It was “safety” concerns, put forward in another technical report by the CWC, that had forced the environment ministry to modify its first stop work order of April 23, 2010.

Ramesh dissatisfaction with the level of R&R work is clear in the order. “On the one hand, there are the technical reports of the CWC and the CEA with the report of the CWC being particularly categorical in its conclusions on the need to complete the remaining five gates soon before the monsoon from an engineering safety stand point. On the other, there is no denying the poor progress on R&R.”

In December 2010, despite repeated requests to recommence work by the state government and PMO, Ramesh did not lift the stop work order. “I felt that there had been very little progress on R&R. The environmental clearance was clearly predicated on R&R proceeding pari passu (at the same pace) with dam construction.”

In March this year, the state government sent a status report on R&R claiming that 70 per cent of the work had been complete. “I was unable to understand how the figure of 70% R&R completion had been arrived at since by the state government’s own admission in this letter, out of 9 villages to be fully submerged only 1 had been relocated to a developed site.”

The state government was asked for an explanation, which was “not at all convincing.” The state government then submitted a review undertaken by the chief minister on April 19.

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan stepped in, along with his predecessor Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh, wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking for his intervention.