Uttarakhand to formulate new power policy

Uttarakhand CM Vijay Bahuguna has said the state government would shortly formulate special policies for the development of new hydel projects and other reconstruction works in view of the June 16-17 floods.

For this purpose, the chief minister said the government would set up a core group to formulate the new policy involving top environmentalists like Anil Joshi, the head of HESCO and The Energy and Resources Institute Director-General R K Pachauri.

"These policies would be formulated keeping all environmental concerns in mind," the chief minister said, after a meeting of the Uttarakhand Environment Index Development Committee in New Delhi on Saturday.

The chief minister's statement came at a time when Uttarakhand is yet to recover from the vast devastation caused by the natural disaster in June this year which crippled the economy of the state and damaged scores of hydel projects. A host of environmentalists and religious leaders are blaming the hydel projects for causing widespread destruction in the state.

Significantly, the Supreme Court had asked the state government not to grant fresh permissions to new projects till further orders and called for setting up an expert committee to study the 24 hydel projects afresh and submit a report within three months.

But the hydropower developers were not enthused with the chief minister's statement on formulating new power policies. "We have some existing policies where the permission could be granted. But the most important thing is to show a clear resolve toward tapping the hydropower sector," said a top official of the Uttarakhand Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd, the state-run power generation company.

Anil Joshi said the state must follow all the environmental indicators which are needed for the development of hydropower. Uttarakhand would be the first state to make environmental parameters as one of the indicators of the state's growth. "We are moving toward gross environmental product, which would come into effect from January 1. So, the new power policies must be formulated keeping the environmental parameters in mind," said Joshi.

But Avdhash Kaushal, chairperson of RLEK, a Dehradun-based non-governmental organisation, said the big power projects must be built in view of the vast shortage of power in the state. These projects, he claimed, did not cause major damage to the fragile Himalayas.

Significantly, the Centre last year declared a 100 km stretch along the Bhagirathi river in Uttarkashi district as an eco-sensitive zone, which had sounded a death-knell for 1,743 Mw of power. Moreover, the final report of the inter-ministerial group headed by B K Chaturvedi had badly impacted the hydropower sector in the Ganga river basin to the tune of 6,000 Mw.