Taking a serious note of the “overexploitation” of groundwater by multinational cola giant Pepsi at water scarce Pudussery near here, the local grama panchayat has decided to serve a stop memo on the company on May 10 after completing all legal formalities.
Talking to The Hindu here, panchayat president and local CPI(M) leader A Unnikrishnan said the panchayati raj Act empowered the local body to issue such an order on water-guzzling units in the face of the extreme drought situation. The stop memo would be valid for three months, he said.
The panchayat council that met on Monday decided to adopt a resolution in this regard and would be consulting legal experts before issuing the stop memo. Meanwhile, sources in Pepsi India claimed that the Palakkad unit was one of the most water-efficient units. “It has been able to save about 200 million litres of water in the past four years and brought down water usage by 60 per cent, utilising only 0.7 per cent of the total water consumption in the area,” they claimed.
