The appellants in a case against the Vizhinjam Seaport Project before the Green Tribunal have said Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has “slandered us by stating that our motives in moving against the project are unholy.”
Mr. Chandy, while interacting with a group of management students from the University of Kerala on Monday, had called them people with “vested interests” and accused them of making “a clandestine move to scuttle the Vizhinjam seaport project.”
In a statement on Wednesday, the appellants in the case — A. Joseph Vijayan, P. Michael, and P. Christopher — asserted their legal right to approach the Green Tribunal against a project they believed was given environmental clearance wrongly. They said that, as residents and social workers of Vizhinjam area, they had participated in the public hearing on the project to raise their fear that the seaport, if implemented as conceived at present, would have a deleterious impact on the area and its people.
The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, in its order giving clearance for the project, too had noted that those who had complaints about the order could approach the Green Tribunal, they said.
