Karnataka - Mangalore   

Public hearing on MSEZ ends abruptly

MANGALORE: The much anticipated public consultation on the environmental impact of the Mangalore Special Economic Zone project ended abruptly on Wednesday after Deputy Commissioner M. Maheshwar Rao closed the proceedings. The decision was arrived at after hundreds of people who had gathered for the consultation resorted to sloganeering and shouting.

Mr. Rao explained, “A lot of people were prevented from sharing their views on the subject, and the proceedings cannot be conducted under the current circumstances.” In the end, out of the estimated 3,000 people who had gathered to voice their dissent, barely three managed to get on to the dais to speak.

The meeting was doomed almost from the moment it began.

The first flashes of trouble started when various farmers’ organisations, citizens’ forums and non-governmental organisations began demanding that some students who had gathered for the meeting should leave the meeting hall.

They claimed that people who were going to be immediately affected by the MSEZ project were being made to stand outside while “outsiders” were being allowed to sit inside the hall. They also alleged that MSEZ Ltd. had intentionally “planted” a few hundred students from the city in the hall.

After being pacified by Mr. Rao, the crowd settled down, but only momentarily. All hell broke loose and the hall turned into a cauldron of noise when the first speaker, Leo Saldanha, a member of the NGO Environment Support Group, claimed that the proceedings were being conducted illegally. He also alleged that Mr. Rao was acting outside the purview of the powers bestowed upon him.

Quoting from the text of the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006, Mr. Saldanha said, “The notification stipulates that the draft of the EIA document and its summary should be printed in the local language (which, in this case, is Kannada) apart from English.”

In the case of the EIA done for the MSEZ, the summary has been printed in Kannada but the detailed draft is completely in English.

Taking a cue from Mr. Saldanha’s line of argument, others in the crowd shouted slogans and claimed that since the detailed draft was in English, they had not been able to understand and respond to the report in the public consultation, which had been organised primarily to discuss the contents of the document.

Mr. Rao responded by saying that he was conducting the meeting according to precedents that had already been set in such cases.

But he chose not to comment on Mr. Saldanha’s reaction where he said, “Precedence does not make illegal things legal.”

Two more speakers took the stage after Mr. Saldanha and their speeches further provoked the crowd, who by now were in an unrelenting mood and demanding that the meeting be postponed.

In an attempt to control the proceedings, Mr. Rao requested some present and former elected representatives from the region to come up on the dais and pacify the crowd.

The representatives included Krishna Palemar, MLA, and the former MLAs B.A Moideen and Vijaykumar Shetty.

When the crowd booed them off the stage, Mr. Rao walked out of the meeting and announced,

“This meeting is closed until further notice.”

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