Skip to main content

People not given necessary documents, environmental hearing for Vadodara-Mumbai expressway "illegal"

By A Representative
Raising strong objection to the Environmental Public Hearing (EPH) proposed by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) in five Gujarat districts -- Valsad, Navsari, Surat, Bharuch and Vadodara -- to be held between February 18 and 28 for constructing the Express Highway between Vadodara and Mumbai, senior Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS) activist Krishnakant has said in a letter to M Veeerappa Moily, Union minister for forests and environment, that it is being carried out in violation of the basic norms of the Environmental Protection Act 1986 and Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006.
The letter, whose copy has been sent to senior Indian and Gujarat government officials and district collectors, who happen to be chairmen of the proposed EPH, says, the EPH will not be held transparently and should therefore be suspended. Currently, the dedicated Express Highway runs between Ahmedabad and Vadodara, and its construction up to Mumbai has been delayed because of failure to acquire land for it.
The letter says, “As per the EIA notification of 2006 the authorities conducting the EPH have to make available along with hard copies of the EIA report soft copy of the EIA report on the website. However, the soft copies, put up on the website of Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) are scanned copies of badly photocopied EIA report.”
It points out, “The summarised copy of the EIA translated into vernacular language has many characters missing in the electronic copy. This effectively makes the summary the only document provided in vernacular language that most of the people understand, unreadable. The authorities seem to have taken the process of law very casually, encouraging contempt of the due processes to be followed.”
It further says, “The EIA consultants for the said project M/s Intercontinental Consultants and Technocrats Pvt. Ltd. (ICTPL) deemed to have overlooked the EIA notification 2006 and the guidelines for the same, which prescribe that under the ‘Disclosure by the Consultant’ a copy of the certificate awarded by QCI-NABET has to be duly annexed. Hence it is not clear whether the said consultant was awarded the certification for which period and with what terms and conditions.”
It underlines, “We are really shocked that how come this casual approach of NHAI towards the procedure mandated under the Law is being entertained and under what circumstances. concerned authority has given go ahead for conducting EPH with such basic norms being overlooked and violated in such a matter of grave concern.”
Based on this, the senior environmentalist demands:
· The concerned authority should immediately reject the EIA of NHAI for Vadodara- Mumbai Expressway prepared by ICTPL.
· The concerned authority should immediately cancel the EPH.
· A colour copy of the EIA be provided in print, and also a soft copy.
· The soft copy uploaded on the website of the GPCB be immediately corrected and an original soft copy be uploaded.
· Investigative process be initiated against the responsible for entertaining such casual approach of NHAI and violation of the environmental law and its due process.
· Reschedule the EPH accordingly.

Paryavaran Mitra writes to Gujarat Pollution Control Board against hearing

Mahesh Pandya of Paryavaran Mitra in a separate letter to Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) member-secretary Hardik Shah, has said that the upcoming project of National Highway Authority of India (Vadodara - Mumbai Expressway) public hearing of which is scheduled in last week of February 2014 is being held without necessary copies of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report for the expressway project being made available to the people the six districts where it is proposed.
"I would like to draw your attention to an important aspect of public hearing which is demonstrated in Appendix IV, Procedure for Conduct of Public Hearing, 2.2 of EIA Notification 2006, which says the applicant shall arrange to forward copies, one hard and one soft, of the draft EIA Report along with the Summary EIA report to District Magistrate/s, Zila Parishad or Municipal Corporation, District Industries Office, concerned Regional Office of the Ministry of Environment and Forests", the letter says.
It adds, "The public notice was published by the GPCB for public hearing of National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) for Surat district dated January 20, 2014, in which it was mentioned that the draft EIA reports of the NHAI project has been sent to the offices of district collector, district development office, district industry centre, taluka development office, regional office of GPCB of Surat district and will be available for inspection during office hours."
However, he pointed out, "on January 28 and 29, 2014, i.e. after more than a week of the publication of the public notice, we sent our representative to all these offices to know the availability of the report." The representatives found that  in the Bharuch district collector's office, the copy of the report "was not  available" and the "representative was directed to other offices like the record department, the registry department etc, but in all of them they were told that they did not keep these reports." 
Then the representative went to the district industries centre (DIC), Bharuch, where he was again told that the "copy" of the report was not available, and that since it was a "a big project and people could make misuse of it, they did not keep it." The representative was directed to approach the project proponent for the report. As for the district development office (DDO), again, the copy was not available, and the representative was told that "the report would be made available only one or two weeks before public hearing." In fact, the DDO's office was "reluctant to accept written application for the copy."
In Surat, the report was, again, available in the district collector's office and the DDO's office, and the representative was told to approach the "revenue branch or take it from the project proponent." Only the DIC had a copy of the report. Pandya demanded, "Since the villagers do not have access to the draft EIA report based on which they can obtain information about the project and ask questions in the public hearing, appropriate action should be taken." Pandya also raised objection to the poor, unreadable quality of the EIA report put on the GPCB website.
(Also see Falguni Joshi's letter to the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) on the EIA report. Click HERE)

Comments

Post a Comment

TRENDING

From colonial mercantilism to Hindutva: New book on the making of power in Gujarat

By Rajiv Shah  Professor Ghanshyam Shah ’s latest book, “ Caste-Class Hegemony and State Power: A Study of Gujarat Politics ”, published by Routledge , is penned by one of Gujarat ’s most respected chroniclers, drawing on decades of fieldwork in the state. It seeks to dissect how caste and class factors overlap to perpetuate the hegemony of upper strata in an ostensibly democratic polity. The book probes the dominance of two main political parties in Gujarat—the Indian National Congress and the BJP—arguing that both have sustained capitalist growth while reinforcing Brahmanic hierarchies.
Post a Comment
»

From protest to proof: Why civil society must rethink environmental resistance

By Shankar Sharma*  As concerned environmentalists and informed citizens, many of us share deep unease about the way environmental governance in our country is being managed—or mismanaged. Our complaints range across sectors and regions, and most of them are legitimate. Yet a hard question confronts us: are complaints, by themselves, effective? Experience suggests they are not.
Post a Comment
»

Kolkata event marks 100 years since first Communist conference in India

By Harsh Thakor*   A public assembly was held in Kolkata on December 24, 2025, to mark the centenary of the First Communist Conference in India , originally convened in Kanpur from December 26 to 28, 1925. The programme was organised by CPI (ML) New Democracy at Subodh Mallik Square on Lenin Sarani. According to the organisers, around 2,000 people attended the assembly.
Post a Comment
»

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan  In a groundbreaking  study  spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.
Post a Comment
»

Dalit woman student’s death sparks allegations of institutional neglect in Himachal college

By A Representative   A Dalit rights organisation has alleged severe caste- and gender-based institutional violence leading to the death of a 19-year-old Dalit woman student at Government Degree College, Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, and has demanded arrests, resignations, and an independent inquiry into the case.
Post a Comment
»

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram  India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.
Post a Comment
»

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...
Post a Comment
»

The architect of Congolese liberation: The life and legacy of Patrice Lumumba

By Harsh Thakor*  Patrice Émery Lumumba remains a central figure in the history of African decolonization, serving as the first Prime Minister of the independent Republic of the Congo. Born on July 2, 1925, Lumumba emerged as a radical anti-colonial leader who sought to unify a nation fractured by decades of Belgian rule. His tenure, however, lasted less than seven months before his dismissal and subsequent assassination on January 17, 1961.
Post a Comment
»

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor*  This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.
Post a Comment
»