Interest groups use environment as shield: Jairam Ramesh

Ratnagiri/New Delhi : In the wake of the renewed farmers’ protest over the Jaitapur nuclear power plant, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday defended the ?go-ahead? given to the project and said it is not an ?environmental concern?.

?The plant is not an environmental concern. As far as environment clearance is concerned, we have done all that is required and all different interest groups should not use environment as a shield behind which they start firing their guns at government,” Ramesh told reporters in New Delhi.

“On November 28, the Environment clearance for Jaitapur nuclear power project was accorded. The 35 conditions associated with the clearance have also been made public,” he said.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Congress government in Maharashtra sent a six-member panel to review the situation in Konkon region’s Ratnagiri in the wake of the renewed farmers’ protest over the Jaitapur nuclear power plant with French collaboration.

The decision follows a stinging ecological rebuke of the project in a report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).

According to media reports, Maharashtra Congress chief Manikrao Thakre said a Congress committee is going to Jaitapur to look into the causes of protest by the locals and fishermen there.

“We will listen to their views and problems,” he said.

The stir refuses to subside despite the Environment Ministry’s conditional go-ahead to the plant.

Villagers of Madban, the site of the plant, said they were fearful of the project since it could be devastating and also their children would have nothing to fall back on with the farmlands consumed by the project.

Many villages said they would resist the project with their lives.

The renewed protest is also accentuated by an Impact Assessment Report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) that flayed the setting up of the nuclear power plant at Jaitapur in the Konkan region.

According to the report, the project, spreading over about 968 hectares of land spanning five villages, will have a huge negative impact on the social as well as environmental development of not just these villages and the surrounding areas but the Konkan region in general.

The report also alleged that the government subverted facts and called fertile agricultural land barren. It also indicated that the Jaitapur project is sitting on a high to moderate severity earthquake zone.

The Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project (JNPP) is located in the ecologically sensitive coastal Maharashtra region which includes Raigad, Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri districts.

The JNPP comprises six EPRs each of 1650 MW, proposed to be set up in a phased manner in twin unit construction mode over a period of 15-17 years by Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) in technical collaboration with Areva, France at Madban villagei.

The first EPR unit at Jaitapur is expected to start generating electricity within seven years from now.

On Dec 6, a pact was signed between India and France signalling the go-ahead to the Jaitapur nuclear plant in Maharashtra with the help of Areva-built reactors despite local protests over the unit in the western state.