A hassled
Jairam Ramesh on Thursday washed his hands of the row over the Jaitapur nuclear plant. He said the responsibility of the plant lies with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited ( NPCIL) and the Maharashtra government-and not his ministry.
"It is the NPCIL and the Department of Atomic Energy ( DAE) which are putting up the nuclear plant, while the land is being acquired by the state government. It is not the environment and forest ministry that is putting up the Jaitapur plant," Ramesh told reporters on Thursday, in an attempt to distance himself from the row.
The minister had on Wednesday faced stiff protests as he attended a convocation ceremony at Mumbai's Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). A section of students boycotted him for granting environmental clearance to the plant.
Ramesh on Thursday argued that his ministry gave clearance to the project last year only after taking into consideration various environmental safeguards. This was in contrast to one of his recent statements. Ramesh had recently confessed in public that he was "forced" to condone environmental violations while clearing certain projects.
On Thursday, he also dismissed suggestions to set up an independent regulatory authority for environment on the lines of the Jan Lokpal Bill for clearing projects.
Ramesh said the National Environment Assessment and Monitoring Authority (NEAMA) proposed by his ministry was sufficient enough to avoid "pressure" from higher-ups and to ensure transparency.
The NEAMA will function as an independent body that will be accountable only to Parliament, he said.
But Ramesh conceded that the concerns raised by locals regarding the power plant "were genuine". He said there are "three categories" of people who are protesting in Jaitapur: those who are opposed to nuclear energy per se or those who are ideologically opposed to the concept, those who have become anti-nuclear after the Fukushima disaster in Japan and the locals, who have genuine livelihood concerns.
The Jaitapur project was granted clearance by the Union ministry of environment and forests on November 28 last year-six days before India signed a nuclear deal with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
A sale agreement on the European Pressurised Reactor, an untested design that will be set up in Jaitapur, was the highlight of the Indo- French nuclear deal.
Courtesy: Mail Today
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