Shimla: The National Green Tribunal on Thursday
ordered an interim stay on land acquisition process by
Himachal Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (HPPCL) for Renuka
Dam Project in the state`s Sirmaur district.
Hearing a petition filed by a local challenging the
environmental clearances given to the project in October 2009,
the Tribunal passed the order after the counsel for the
petitioner argued that the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA)
report for the project was totally inadequate and suffered
from severe discrepancies.
The figures of the total area to be acquired for the
project and the total number of families to be affected were
not given correctly in the EIA report and the affidavit filed
by HPPCL in the court contained three different sets of data,
advocate Ritwick Dutta alleged.
While the clearnace was granted for 1,477 hectares
of land, the HPPCL was now claiming that the total land
required for the project would be 2,239 hectares.
Similarly, the EIA stated that only 308 families will
be directly affected by the project but the current HPPCL list
puts this figure at more than 1000 which too was a tentative
figure.
"How can the project be accorded any clearances or
move forward when the baseline data was absent or false?" He
mentioned that the Forest Clearance for the project was
rejected by the MoEF in August 2010, almost a year ago.
It claimed that 37 villages would lose their
livelihoods and land.
The tribunal fixed September 1 as next date of
hearing in the case.
PTI
