More than 150 mini-hydel projects being in various stages of implementation in the ecologically-fragile Western Ghats area.
The Karnataka High Court’s directive to the state government staying two mini-hydel projects in the ecologically-sensitive Western Ghats is bound to have far-reaching consequences.
The order is also a scathing indictment of the manner in which the government has been throwing environmental laws to the winds.
Wildlife biologist Sanjay Gubbi said, “The order is significant since the court has taken the government to task over the flagrant manner in which the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 was violated to divert forest land.” The division bench of the court on Wednesday, in fact, pulled up the government for granting lease for the two mini-hydel projects keeping only the interest of the private company in mind.
Gubbi, a conservationist who has been working in the Western Ghats, pointed out that the forest department had never taken any cognisance of the manner in which forest land was being diverted towards the construction of the two projects.
“The Forest (Conservation) Act itself is very stringent. But what was shocking was that there were people who did not want the Act to be implemented,” he said. “What also needs to be looked at is the reason why the state government has been going in for a number of mini-hydel projects in the area instead of building just one major dam.”
Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) flayed the “lax forest governance” and called for all officers, without whose collusion the projects could not have gone ahead, to be held accountable.
“This is a scam since the proponents of the project—Maruthi Power Gen (India) Limited—have been permitted to build two projects at the same location with the same survey numbers. The officials of the renewable energy department who allowed this need to be held accountable,” he said.
With more than 150 mini-hydel projects being in various stages of implementation in the ecologically-fragile Western Ghats area, Parineeta Dandekar, also of SANDRP, described the high court order as the tip of the iceberg. “There is a need to look at all such projects that have been planned in the region. What is significant is that projects under 25MW capacity do not need environmental clearance.”
This, explained Dandekar, is a crucial factor since there are a number of projects whose capacity is between 24MW and 25MW. “This practice allows the government to violate environmental laws with impunity.”
“The Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification needs to change to ensure that all projects with capacity above 1 MW should require an EIA clearance at some stage along with a management plan. The scam goes beyond the building of such projects without following regulations. They are also being called ‘climate-friendly’ and get Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) credits. Several 24 or even 24.5 MW hydro projects in Karnataka are getting such credits. All these must be investigated,” asserted Thakkar.
Even mini-hydel projects can cause vast tracts of forest land in the Western Ghats to be submerged. Dandekar called this a “non-negotiable” proposition. The court too came down heavily on the government in this regard. It described forest land as the state’s wealth, and remarked that the government was granting leases for the use of forest land for its own benefits. The division bench damned the state government for destroying forests in the name of “clean green power”
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