Column, Governance Now, May 16-31
The list of his own illegal actions is pretty long
Under pressure for permitting projects in violation of environment and forest laws, minister Jairam Ramesh played the victim the other day.
He said: “I am completely against regularising an illegality. But sometimes I am forced to. A steel plant has been built or a power project has been constructed… violations are detected afterwards. I cannot shut them down. Hundreds of crores (of rupees) are invested. There are livelihood issues.”
He went on to add: “A violation of law has to be prevented at the start. It is very difficult to correct it later. They become fait accompli and sometimes there is little option but to look for a compromise. I have had to make compromises on some projects.”
Sounds good as far as confessions go but Ramesh deceives here too.
Here is how.
Ramesh says a violation has to be prevented at the start. But he didn’t do so in case of the Posco project. The project is yet to take off. Two enquiry teams he sent said the forest rights had not been granted to the project-affected people and, hence, clearance should be withheld. He did the opposite and cleared it for the ‘third’ time on May 2.
His defence was: (a) “Faith and trust in what the state government says is an essential pillar of cooperative federalism”, (b) that “it was at my personal insistence that in August 2009, the ministry of environment and forests made adherence to the Forest Rights Act, 2006 an essential pre-requisite for allowing diversion of forest land” and (c) “I was under no obligation or pressure to do so except my own commitment to FRA, 2006”.
Ours is not a banana republic as Ramesh seems to suggest. Project clearances are governed by a set of laws, including the FRA. He is not obliged, he is “bound” to uphold law of the land. He took this oath while being inducted into the council of ministers.
For his benefit, it should be pointed out that section 4(5) of the FRA says “no member of a forest dwelling scheduled tribe or other traditional forest dweller shall be evicted or removed from forest land under his occupation till the recognition (of forest rights) and verification procedure is completed.”
He knows very well that the Orissa government has not implemented forest rights in Posco area. He admits as much. Yet, instead of insisting on compliance of the law, he is justifying his illegal approval.
Similar is the case with the Polavaram project in Andhra Pradesh. Ramesh himself admitted in his clearance letter that the FRA had not been implemented by Andhra Pradesh and two neighbouring states to be affected – Orissa and Chhattisgarh.
If he had to issue a ‘stop order’ later, it was because of public pressure. On his part, he violated the law.
In the latest case, he has lifted ‘stop work’ on the Maheshwar dam in Madhya Pradesh on specious grounds that chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan told him verbally that the rehabilitation and resettlement (RR) had been slow “because the project-affected people have begun to think that the dam project will not be completed on account of the MoEF’s rigid stance”.
In the same order, he mentions thrice that the state government’s claims that 70 percent of RR is complete “are not at all convincing”.
Ramesh also points out how non-compliance of RR requirement violates various legal requirements and the supreme court’s specific orders. But all these don’t stop him from taking the only legal recourse left to him, that is, withholding the clearance.
He is right when he says he is “forced to” make “compromises”. But he forgets violation of law is a criminal offence. He is guilty of both allowing the past illegalities and committing fresh ones. His oath of office requires him to stand up and uphold the rule of law. By not doing that he has failed the constitution as well as the people he is supposed to serve.
The sad part is such gross violations don’t attract criminal prosecution in our system.
prasanna@governancenow.com
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