New Delhi: The Supreme Court Friday fixed November 15 as the date for the final hearing on the interlocutory application filed by Odisha government for seeking stay on the Indirasagar Polavaram dam project.
A three-judge bench of Justice Madan B Lokur, Justice Deepak Gupta and Justice S Abdul Nazeer has scheduled the application for final hearing after the Union of India denied the need for backwater study.
The counsel appearing for the Centre told the court that a complete study was been conducted on the Polavaram dam by former Central Water Commission member M Gopalkrishnan on the direction of the apex court in 2011 and he also submitted the report. The counsel said that there is no requirement for a further study on the project.
However, in his argument, the state government advocate said that Odisha has objected to the M Gopalkrishnan report.
Notably, the apex court Thursday asked the Union government whether or not it has conducted a backwater study on Polavaram project.
The Odisha government had filed an interlocutory application for quashing the July 2018 order of Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) allowing Andhra Pradesh to continue construction work on the Polavaram dam.
In the application, the Odisha government said that the project didn’t have valid environment clearance and the Union government had issued stop work order to Andhra Pradesh in February 2011. It further stated that the stop work order has been kept in abeyance by the MoEF on yearly basis since July 2015.
Earlier Thursday, Odisha government’s counsel made his submission stating that work on the dam project should be suspended as the project didn’t have valid environmental clearance (EC). He further said that the EC was given for discharge capacity of 36 lakh cusecs water, but the Andhra Pradesh government changed the scope of the dam from 36 to 50 lakh cusecs.