The East Coast Energy Private Ltd (ECEPL) plant at Kakarapalli village in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh, which recently got the nod from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), has garnered much infamy for several legal violations.
Now, former power and finance secretary EAS Sarma has also written to the Union minister to scrap the project altogether.
Mr Sarma has written to the Union environment & forests minister Jayanthi Natarajan, “I understand that MoEF had recently issued a letter to the private company that they could go ahead with the construction of the project subject to certain conditions. Subsequently, it appears that the Ministry had second thoughts on this and kept that communication in abeyance. Considering the public opposition to the project, I am afraid that any precipitate action on the part of your Ministry would only have serious adverse implications."
Construction of the first phase will generate a capacity of 1,320MW (megawatts) of the 2,640MW thermal power project and the company will spend some Rs7,000 crore on the first phase. Local residents had protested against the construction, and the ensuing violence left two dead in police firing. Despite a Supreme Court judgement that all public utility lands be returned to the respective gram panchayats after removing existing constructions, ECEPL went ahead with the construction and obtained the clearance afterwards. Moreover, the company has allegedly not surrendered 500 acres of land as promised in lieu of the environmental clearance.
“(The) Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF) ought not to have accorded environment clearance for ECEPL's project at Kakarapalli as the site is situated in a unique wetland system that provides sustenance to thousands of traditional fishermen, small salt farmers and others. The wetland at Kakarapalli is also the nesting ground for more than 120 species of migratory birds. Setting up a project in such a wetland invariably causes flooding of thousands of acres of the adjacent agricultural lands," he said. Read the full report here.
Source: Moneylife.
