Congress slams govt over 'thoughtless clearance for Teesta dam rebuild'

The Congress on Wednesday opposed the Centre's reported nod to building a dam for the Teesta III hydel project in place of the dam washed away in 2023's glacial lake flood, claiming it was a "thoughtless clearance" as the threat of disaster continued to persist at the dam site.

Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh shared on X a media report that claimed the BJP's Sikkim unit chief would meet Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav later this month to raise its pitch over safety concerns surrounding the clearance to build a dam for the Teesta III hydel project.

"The INC (Indian National Congress) also opposes this thoughtless clearance. The threat of disaster persists at the dam site. There are also cascading and multiplying effects on habitations downstream," Ramesh said.

He also shared the Congress' statement from last August in which the opposition party had hit out at the government and said hydel projects in ecologically fragile regions had been coming up over the past few years without giving adequate thought to their cumulative environmental impact.

The Congress had also asserted that dams on the Teesta river were a prime example of how the ecology was being fundamentally altered, with grave consequences for this and future generations.

In the August statement, Ramesh had said a series of landslide disasters in Sikkim had substantially damaged the Teesta V, a 510 MW hydel power station on the river.

This disaster comes on the heels of the Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOF) and riverine floods in the Teesta river basin in October 2023, which caused massive devastation in Sikkim and Kalimpong in West Bengal, he had noted.

A spate of hydro projects on the Teesta has caused the river to become more flood-prone, washing away sections of National Highway-10, the Congress general secretary had said.

The October 2023 disaster was provoked by the GLOF but it only reached catastrophic scales due to the failure of the Teesta III dam, the Congress leader had said.