Trouble broke out right from the beginning at a public hearing convened here on May 14 to elicit public views on ONGC’s proposal to drill oil exploratory wells at 22 villages in the district.
The environmental activists and representatives of Tamil outfits would not allow the meeting to take off as they objected to convening the meeting by keeping the villagers in dark but Collector K Nanthakumar deftly handled the situation much to the relief of ONGC officials.
After an ONGC official presented a power-point programme, giving a rosy picture about the project, the activists were on their feet demanding that the Collector cancel the meeting and convene it again after giving sufficient notice to the villagers.
The district environment engineer said the village heads were informed well in advance and flex boards erected in villages but the activists would not convince. As they threatened to stage a boycott, the Collector intervened and assured that he would cancel the meeting if he found any procedural lapses in informing the village heads.
Later, the meeting went on for three hours and in the evening the Collector verified the records and held that there was no procedural lapse in informing the villagers and declared the public hearing valid.
