Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh has lifted the stop-work order on the Maheshwar Hydel Power Corporation Ltd., implying that he was yielding to pressure from the Prime Minister's Office and Madhya Pradesh politicians across political lines.
However, while project promoters are now free to construct the remaining five spillway gates of the dam, the lowering of the gates to fill the reservoir and submerge land will not be allowed until relief and rehabilitation work is completed.
Work on the project was put on hold a year ago as promoters had not complied with conditions of environmental clearance — especially the requirement that relief and rehabilitation for those who would be affected by the project must be done simultaneously.
Activists claim that while 90 per cent of the dam was complete, only 10 per cent of the R&R work had been done.
In March 2011, the Madhya Pradesh government claimed that 70 per cent of R&R work was complete. However, the State government's own report admitted that only one of those nine villages which stood to be fully submerged had been relocated to a developed site. Those who stood to lose their lands and livelihoods but not their homes, and those villages that would be partially submerged were not even taken into account. In all, activists estimate that 70,000 people in over 60 villages would be affected.
Mr. Ramesh's order cited multiple letters to the Prime Minister written by Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan as well as the former Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, urging that the project be allowed to continue. The Prime Minister's Office convened a number of “reviews” of the project, the most recent of them held on May 2.
Mr. Chauhan also claimed that “the reason R&R has been slow is because the project-affected people have begun to think that the dam project will not be completed on account of the MoEF's rigid stance — so why move at all is the attitude of the people.”
Other factors cited in the decision to lift the stop-work order are the technical reports warning that the gates must be completed before the monsoon to ensure the engineering safety of the dam, as well as the Union Power Ministry's request that the dam project be allowed to proceed so as to provide 400 MW of electricity to the power-starved State.
Mr. Ramesh said he, therefore, “had no option” but to agree to the lifting of the stop-work order.
Noting Mr. Ramesh's narrative of the PMO's interventions , the Narmada Bachao Andolan criticised the order. “That a Union Minister, no less, should repeatedly be prevented from doing his statutory duty by the Prime Minister's Office and should have to state that he is violating statutory conditions on dictation from above, is entirely shocking and shameful, and is a open comment on the crony nature of the current governance in India.”
