Experts' report to PMO faults Sethu project, SC told

NEW DELHI: Janata Party president Subramaniam Swamy told the Supreme Court on Friday that experts had warned against going ahead with the Rs
2,400 crore Sethusamudram project in a development that could land the government in an embarassing position.

The Manmohan Singh government had earlier boxed itself into a corner in 2007 after filing an affidavit in SC doubting the existence of Lord Rama and the epic Ramayana in its eagerness to implement the mega project. Swamy told the SC on oath on Friday that National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) had submitted a “devastating report” to the government red-lighting the Sethusamudram project and the Centre was “deliberately” keeping it under wraps.

The report was handed over to the government in March 2009, Swamy said and claimed the Centre intended to keep it under wraps “because contents of the report is such — it delineates consequences so disastrous for India that no one with any sense of responsibility/conscience could thereafter proceed with the project at all — that on its basis it would be necessary to scrap the entire Sethusamudram ship channel project”.

Swamy was one of the petitioners who had challenged the project, in which the apex court had stopped dredging by its August 31, 2007, interim order. The court had then okayed a high-level committee headed by environmentalist R K Pachauri to examine the project and give a report.

Seeking early hearing of the Sethusamudram issue before a Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan, Swamy said the government be directed to place the NIO report before the court. The Bench agreed that hearing on the issue was long overdue and posted it for deliberations in the first week of October. Swamy, in his application, quoted extensively from the NIO report and said experts had faulted the meagre data collected on the possible impact of the project on marine biodiversity.