Date:23/01/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/01/23/stories/2008012360101300.htm

National

Project should not damage Ramar Sethu, says Jayalalithaa

Legal Correspondent

Direct Centre to take alternative route: plea

Destruction fraught with serious consequences
Project being hurried through for political reasons

New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear on January 28 a writ petition filed by Jayalalithaa, general secretary, All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, for a direction to the Centre to implement the Sethusamudram project through an alternative route without damaging Ramar Sethu.

She has also sought a direction to declare Adam’s Bridge/Ramar Sethu a national monument and to restrain the Centre and other authorities from destroying it while executing the project.

(On January 16, the court gave the Centre two weeks to file a comprehensive affidavit explaining its stand on the project. It is yet to be filed.)

Ms. Jayalalithaa said Ramar Sethu, by reason of its antiquity and unique features, should be treated as a world heritage site. Any destruction of or damage to the structure, as envisaged in the project, was fraught with serious ecological, environmental, climatic and security consequences.

She said the significance of Ramar Sethu could well be appreciated from the fact that even the Survey of India adopted in 1767 a logo “which reads ‘AaSetuHimachalam’ meaning thereby that India is spread between Ramar Bridge and the Himalayas.”

Ms. Jayalalithaa said: “One source notes that Ramancoil has been shown on a 1747 map made in the Netherlands, called the Malabar Bowen Map of the Netherlands, and that the 1788 edition of the map called Map of Hindoostan or the Mughal Empire, which is available in Saraswati Mahal Library, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, makes [a] reference to the bridge.”

She said, “The bridge’s unique curvature and composition by age reveals that it is man made and that archaeological studies revealed that first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to the primitive age of about 17,50,000 years and the bridge’s age is also almost equivalent.”

Ms. Jayalalithaa said that in 2005, she as Chief Minister voiced her concern at the damage to the ecologically sensitive zone and the effect of the project on the livelihood of fishermen but these aspects were not considered and it was being hurried through for political reasons.