Environment ministry's affidavit on Dhamra contrary to own findings: Greenpeace

Friendships can only take you so far, at least in environment activism. After emerging as the darling of environmental groups in the last year and half, environment minister Jairam Ramesh has fallen out of favor with the world's most active environmental lobby group -- allegedly over his complicity in whitewashing the sins of his predecessors.

"It is a matter of fairness, if you are applying one law for Vedanta, you must apply the same to other groups also," says Ashish Fernandes, the 'oceans campaigner' for Greenpeace India.

What has got Greenpeace's goat is the environment ministry's recent affidavit to the Supreme Court's Central Empowered Committee (CEC) that Orissa's Dhamra port project, a joint venture between Larsen & Toubro and Tata Steel, was not built on forest land.

According to documents extracted by Greenpeace from the ministry, its Supreme Court affidavit was directly contrary to its actual findings on the ground.

"It is clear that Dhamra Port project site was never developed as a Port and is a part of the protected forest under the Kanika Protected Forest [Orissa]," concludes the report by JK Tewari, chief conservator of forests with the ministry's Eastern Regional Office.

According to the copy produced by Greenpeace, Tewari's letter to the ministry headquarters in Delhi also ran contrary to the claim by the project promoters that Dhamra was the site of an existing port and not a forest or mangrove. The letter, written in April this year, pointed out that the area had been declared as a protected forest in 1961.

"It is clear that the physical infrastructure regarding development of port facilities was not created at Dhamra and the coastal areas were naturally either mangrove forests or mud flats," the chief conservator concludes, after examining government survey documents.

The revelation has dampened the activists' enthusiasm for the new minister. Ramesh, who took over in May last year, had re-energized the environmental campaigners by breaking with his predecessor's tradition of turning a blind eye to violations of India's considerable environmental legislation.

While the first phase of the port is nearly complete, activists want the new minister to stop batting for his predecessors.

"For years, we have had this 'fait accompli' situation in which big companies would simply create huge constructions in violation of environmental laws and later pay a small penalty to regularize it. Vedanta was the first case where the minister broke with this tradition. But we are not sure why the same yard-stick is not being used against the Dhamra project," says Fernandes.

"If you can shut down Vedanta project for building without getting forest clearance, you should be able to punish Dhamra as well," he adds.