Arunachal dam meet delayed?

Oct 16, 2010 - MANOJ ANAND |

GUWAHATI

As construction of mega hydro-power projects in the frontier state of Arunachal Pradesh has snowballed into a major controversy in the north-eastern states, the proposed meeting to review the construction of mega hydro-power projects convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may be further deferred with frontier state

mounting pressure on New Delhi. The Assam government, which has failed to take any firm stand on construction of mega dams, is said to have decided to push for constitution of an expert committee to study the whole gamut of issues.
The meeting, convened by the Prime Minister and slated to be held on Wednesday but deferred to October 18, is now likely to be postponed to a later date.
The anti-dam lobby of Assam is pushing for scrapping the mega dam hydro power projects as it was threatening the livelihood of downstream people in Assam.
The entire problem started spilling into controversy after a lobby of power-brokers allegedly having clout in the political leadership of Arunachal started sanctioning small, medium and large hydro power projects to private parties and realised a huge amount of cut for getting them the projects.
In fact, a mad rush of businessmen turned industrialists started to get power projects and within a short span of time the frontier state government sanctioned more than 135 small, medium and mega hydro-power projects for construction in the state.
Though the state government has not made public the list of industrial houses which got the power projects in the frontier state, sources said that businessmen involved in purchasing scraps, selling iron and steel and even suppliers, managed to get mega hydro-power projects in the frontier state.
Neither the experience nor the financial status of privates parties were examined before sanctioning the projects so now, many of hydro-power projects of the frontier states are either on sell or sold out to new party.
According to technocrats of Central Water Commission, out of 135 hydro-power projects being sanctioned by the state government so far, 77 of them are small and medium hydro-power projects having the capacity below 100 MW.

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