U'khand to approach SC for allowing construction of hydel projects

Apex court's expert committee had given negative report against 23 of 24 hydel projects under scanner of experts from WII

The Uttarakhand cabinet has decided to move the Supreme Court to plead for the construction of the hydel projects which were banned after the last year’s June deluge in the hill state.

The government will soon hire top advocates to fight its case before the apex court for allowing the construction of the hydel projects in the wake of the acute power shortage.

A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of the state cabinet held last evening which was chaired by Chief Minister Harish Rawat.

The Supreme Court had set up an expert committee to assess the role of hydel projects in the last year’s devastating floods that claimed over 5,000 lives and rendered hundreds of others homeless in the state. The expert committee gave a negative report against 23 of the 24 hydel projects which were under the scanner of the experts from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) here.

“We will hire some top advocates to plead our case for the revocation of the ban on hydel projects,” said Chief Secretary Subhash Kumar.

With the change of the government at the centre, Uttarakhand will also send a proposal to the Narendra Modi government to allow construction of small hydel projects upto 25 Mw in the eco-sensitive zone in Uttarakashi district.

The eco sensitive zone was declared by the UPA government on the recommendations of some environmentalists. The centre had issued a gazette notification declaring 100 km stretch between Gomukh and Uttarkashi along holy Bhagirathi river as eco sensitive zone.

But the measure had triggered wide-spread protests in the region on the development issue. The state government had repeated called for a review of the measure with a plea that it will adversely affect the development in the region including hydel projects with a total capacity of 1743 Mw.

Besides the state government, an association of hydel project companies has also decided to move the Supreme Court for the revocation of the ban on the dams.

“Since electricity is the need of the hour, we will fight a legal battle in the Supreme Court for the revocation of ban on hydel projects,” said Avadash Kaushal, chairperson of RLEK, a Dehradun-based NGO which strongly favours harnessing rivers to produce power.