Skip to main content

Narmada valley: SC notice to Gujarat, MP, M'rashtra on submergence sans rehabilitation

By A Representative
Thr Supreme Court has issued notice to Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra governments following a Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA)-backed petition seeking the explanation as to whether large areas of Narmada Valley have gone into submergence by filling up the Sardar Sarovar dam up to the full reservoir level (FRL) without rehabilitating the project affected families (PAFs).
Filed on behalf of dam oustees, the petition was heard by the Supreme Court bench comprising judges NV Ramanna and Ajay Rastogi. The next nearing has been fixed for September 26. Senior advocate Sanjay Parikh told the court that the arbitrary manner in which the dam was allowed to be filled up contradicts the Narmada Water Dispute Tribunal (NWDT) award, as also Supreme Court orders of 2000 and 2005.
Pointing out that the central agency Narmada Control Authority (NCA) allowed the Gujarat authorities to fill up the dam up to FRL, Parikh asserted, little has been done to rehabilitate the oustees, adding NCA even changed the timesheet in order to fill up the dam by September 17. As a result, thousands of families' homes, fields, religious places, innumerable trees, pastures, shops, schools, government buildings etc. have been drowned. Advocate Abhimanyu Shrestha assisted in the petition.

Comments

TRENDING

Xi Jinping’s visit to USA: Recognition that China can't be contained?

By Vijay Prashad   President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

Swaminarayan, untouchability and the 'we are not Hindu' argument

By Rajiv Shah   Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.

From margins to microphones: The rise of Dalit hip-hop in India

By Tersina Maria Toppo*  A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.