NBA protests seeking review of SC verdict

By Our Special Correspondent

BARODA, OCT. 20. Even as the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) has launched a statewide Narmada rally to highlight the State Government's ``failure'' to go ahead with the construction of the Narmada dam project, the Narmada Bachao Andolan held protest rallies and demonstrations in the Narmada valley demanding a review by the Supreme Court of its judgment on October 18 last year, giving clearance for further constructions.

An NBA spokesman here said that in one year after the apex court judgment, it had been proved that all assumptions about the resettlement and rehabilitation of the affected and other aspects of the dam project were false and the court must review its judgment to avoid future disasters, violation of people's rights and constitutional values and to adhere to the principle of justice and equality.

The NBA leaders including Ms. Medha Patkar and others said their apprehensions about the apex court's judgment had turned out to be true as the work on the construction of the dam had proceeded without rehabilitating the people-to-be-affected and their displacements were taken as fate accompli. Even as more than 40,000 families in the submergence areas were facing displacement, no master plan was ready with the governments concerned for their rehabilitation.

Ms. Patkar asserted that even most of the people displaced at the dam height at 85 metres had not been resettled and there was no justification for the apex court to allow further construction up to 90 metres.

But the GPCC president, Mr. Amarsinh Chaudhary, said that even after the Supreme Court gave clearance for taking the dam height up to 90 metres, the State Government failed to ``add even an inch of construction''.

His party would educate the people in the State about the BJP Government's carelessness in implementing the ``lifeline of Gujarat'' project even after all the hurdles were removed.

His claim, however, was repudiated by the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Development Corporation chairman, Mr. Bhupendrasinh Chudasma, who said not only the dam up to 90 metres, the State - with the approval of the apex court - had also completed the construction of the additional three metre hump on the main dam wall.

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