Environment activists are exploring the legal clauses to challenge the public hearing completed for Lanco’s major power expansion plan in Chhattisgarh’s Korba district on Saturday amidst large scale violence.
The activists say that the district administration ignored all the norms and changed the venue of the public hearing besides starting the proceedings all most five years. This prevented most of the people to record their version in the public hearing.
The District Collector, Rajpal Singh Tyagi justified the action and said the administration can change the venue.
He however admitted the thin presence and said: “About 20-25 people had recorded their views.”
About 3000 villagers were sitting on the road protesting against the proceedings while the administration complete the public hearing with just two dozen people.
Even there was no representative of Lanco company present during the proceedings. The environment activists said that this was another violation of the norms as the company’s representative had to be present in the venue to sort out people’s query and come out with company’s version if people have reservation on any issue.
“We are exploring the legal clauses to challenge the public hearing that the administration has completed for Lanco’s expansion plan,” Laxmi Chouhan, director of Non-Government Organisation (NGO) Sarthak, told Business Standard. The NGO is working on the environment issues in the industrial town of Korba.
Chouhan said they were sending all the relevant documents to the experts in New Delhi to seek their guidance on the issue.
“We are demanding that the public hearing should be cancelled as it was invalid,” Chouhan said.
Meanwhile, the police action against the villagers has started assuming political proportions as the opposition party Congress has put the BJP-led government in the witness box. “The government was playing at the hands of big corporate houses and used the police to brutally thrash the villagers at their behest,” Leader of Opposition Ravindra Choubey said.
Congress spokesperson Shailesh Nitin Trivedi said it was atrocious that police tied the villagers and made them to walk more than 10 km bare-foot to the police station when there were vehicles available. He said the ugly face of the Korba police had been exposed.
Lanco Amarkantak Power Private Limited (LAPPL), a subsidiary of Lanco Group, has a power project located in Pathadi village at the outskirts of Korba city.
Under the expansion programme, the company had planned to enhance the capacity from 1920-Mw to 3240-Mw.
