The government was on Tuesday asked by the Supreme Court to expeditiously convey its stand on a report of an expert body which allegedly has doubted the feasibility of the controversial Sethusamudram project. The apex court said the Centre's response to the report of the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) was necessary as it had reserved the verdict on 30th July, 2008 asking the expert committee headed by environmentalist R K Pachauri to examine the feasibility of pushing the project through an alternative route instead of Rama Setu. "You state what is the report. What would be your stand as the report is with you and you have to take some decision," a Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and justices R V Raveendran and J M Panchal said. The Bench was hearing an application moved by Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy seeking scrapping of the controversial Sethusamudram project claiming that NIO which is the expert body of government has doubted its feasibility. The Bench, which made it clear that it was not passing any order at this stage, said since the matter has been pending for 15 months after it reserved the verdict on the bunch of petitions challenging the execution of the project, the government has to dispose its stand. "Because you (government) are coming out with the report, the matter was kept pending for quite sometime. What he (Swamy) is saying is since the matter has been pending you have to dispose of with your stand," the Bench told Additional Solicitor General Haren Raval, who questioned Swamy's claims about the report. The court accepted the plea of the ASG for granting some more time to respond to the application and posted the matter for further hearing on 11th and 12th December by asking him to file proper response on the issue. The Pachauri Committee had outsourced the work of examining the feasibility of the project to NIO which had submitted its report to the government in March, Swamy said. The Bench wanted to know from Raval whether the report submitted to the government was final or not. Raval said, "it is an inconclusive report and we need some more data." He said the statement made by Swamy in the application was not accurate. "All we can say is that the data is inconclusive." However, Swamy said the government should be asked to come out with the report in the court in a time-bound manner and alleged that the entire exercise was huge wastage of tax payers money. "The project is ultimately illegal," he said, adding that the report has been prepared without carrying out the cyclonic and tectonic analysis of the region. Swamy in the application said that NIO is of the view that pushing the project through an alternative route instead of Rama Setu would not make much difference on environment. The Pachauri panel had asked NIO to examine the feasibility of the project from Dhanuskodi instead of Rama Setu which, he claimed, said there are no major differences between the two alignments on the environmental impact. "The report (of NIO) concludes that the impact analysis data is glaringly insufficient and has not been properly studied. Under these circumstances, the project cannot proceed at all and should be scrapped," Swamy said. On 30th July, 2008, while reserving its verdict on the bunch of petitions challenging the execution of the project, the Supreme Court had asked the committee to examine the feasibility of carrying the scheme through alternative alignment running on land north of Dhanushkodi to avoid any damage to Rama Setu. Swamy said the report of the NIO at Dona Paula, Goa, a copy of which was given to the government in March, concluded that "the data available in the region of interest is meagre". The report, he claimed, contains observations which are in general restricted to the vicinity of Tuticorin, which is too far from Adams Bridge for the measurements useful for evaluating the project. Swami said the report concludes that "no serious inference can be drawn from a data record of this sort and therefore we make no attempt to interpret these data". "The available data are clearly inadequate for assessment of the possible impact of the Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project," he said in the application. Further, he said that due to paucity of data, it is difficult to make a conclusive statement on whether alignment 4A would cause more damage to the marine biosphere in the reserve. The impact of oil spill has also not been studied.
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