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Allegations ‘baseless’

Special Correspondent

Halt Dhamra: Greenpeace

BHUBANESWAR: The controversy over a biodiversity assessment study of the proposed Dhamra port project site in Bhadrak district of Orissa took a new turn on Thursday with the environment campaign organisation Greenpeace claiming that it had not tampered with the findings.

Reiterating the organisation’s call to stop work on Dhamra port, Oceans Campaigner of Greenpeace Sanjiv Gopal said that the statement made by authorities of North Orissa University that Greenpeace had made drastic changes in the findings was “baseless.”

“Of course, we have added our views in the ‘foreword’, ‘impacts of port construction’ and ‘recommendations’ chapters, but the Principal Investigator of the study had cleared the final version of the report before it was published for circulation by the Greenpeace,” Mr. Gopal said.

The Greenpeace had commissioned the assessment study to the North Orissa University and Sushil K. Dutta of the Zoology Department of the university was the Principal Investigator.

Mr. Gopal further countered the university’s charge that the Greenpeace had also changed the very title of the study. Squarely blaming the Greenpeace for making changes in the report prepared by the university, Vice-Chancellor Sudarsan Nanda and Prof. Dutta had said on July 1 that a comparison of the report as it appeared in the website of Greenpeace India and the ‘authentic report’ of the university revealed that the campaign organisation had “doctored” the authentic report by way of changing the title and its contents “for motives best known to them.”

Mr. Gopal, however, claimed that the university authorities were aware that the study was being conducted keeping the controversial port project in view.

Prof. Dutta was also present in Mumbai when the report was released on June 8, he said.

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