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Baalu defends Sethu project

NEW DELHI: Rejecting the Bharatiya Janata Party’s objections to the Sethusamudram Ship Channel Project, Union Minister of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways T.R. Baalu on Tuesday traced the steps taken by the former National Democratic Alliance government.

He said that the objections now being raised by the BJP were not put forth by it then.

Strongly pitching for the project, he told mediapersons that none of the studies and investigations had produced any tangible scientific evidence of any man-made structure in the area.

Though work on the Adam’s Bridge portion of the project had been stopped following the Supreme Court’s orders, work was going on in the other areas.

The government and the UPA were united on the project, he said. The government would approach the court for orders to resume work in the Adam’s Bridge portion also.

While presenting a list of reports by scientists from various institutions, he also referred to the role of four BJP Ministers in paving the way for the implementation of the project. “When such projects are undertaken and hundreds of crores of public money is spent, any individual organisation in the garb of PIL cannot be permitted to challenge the policy decision taken after a lapse of time. It is against the national interest and contrary to the established principles of law that decisions to undertake developmental projects are permitted to be challenged after a number of years, during which period public money has been spent in the execution of the project,” Mr. Baalu said, quoting from the Supreme Court’s observation in the Narmada Bachao Andolan case.

He referred to the study undertaken by the Geological Survey of India at the instance of Uma Bharti, then Union Minister of Coal and Mines, that revealed no tangible evidence of any man-made structure. Preliminary studies suggested that all the boreholes were within the “upper quaternary period” (5 to 7 lakh years ago).

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