The Madras High Court posted the petition for further hearing after three weeks.
A Public Interest Litigation has been filed in Madras High Court for a direction to the Centre and Atomic Energy Regulatory Board to undertake a fresh and transparent review of the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) in Tamil Nadu.
When the petition filed by one G Sundararajan came up before the first bench, comprising Chief Justice M Y Eqbal and Justice TS Sivagnanam, senior central government standing counsel took the notice on behalf of the Centre and sought time to get instructions.
The bench posted the petition for further hearing after three weeks.
Stating that the exercise of holding public hearings as per law should be by an independent body of experts, including those from Atomic Energy Department, the petitioner also sought a direction to forbear the Centre from commissioning the project without conducting such a review, a fresh Environment Impact Assessment and Coastal Regulation Zone clearance.
The petitioner said the state government had in 1989 specified that for obtaining environmental clearance to instal such plants, it should not discharge treated effluents into the sea till it devised a proper outfall after carrying out hydrographic studies by a competent agency and creating conditions to satisfy the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board standards.
However, no hydrographic studies appeared to have been undertaken, the petitioner claimed.
The petitioner said the Centre constituted a Task Force after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, which has submitted an interim report on safety evaluation of the KNPP's systems. However the final report was yet to come, he said.
He contended a transparent and complete project review was a statutory compulsion as Units 1 and 2 have not been put through the due Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) process.
The comprehensive EIA report was never made available to the public in advance or a public hearing held, he alleged.
Anti-KNPP activists have been on a relay fast for the past 12 days at Idintakarai coastal village near Kudankulam, demanding scrapping of the plant.
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