The Supreme Court will hear on Thursday BJP leader Subramanian Swamy’s plea to withdraw his 2009 petition against the Sethusamudram project.
Swamy on Monday approached the bench headed by Chief Justice Hl Dattu and sought early listing of the case informing Court of his decision to withdraw his plea after the recent decision by Centre not to dismantle the mythological bridge Rama Sethu.
In his petition, Swamy had challenged the proposed alignment of the project that cut through the Rama Sethu or Adam’s Bridge. Swamy said his prayer for scrapping of the project stands satisfied with the Government’s assurance not to damage it.
The bench, also comprising Justice Amitava Roy posted the case for Thursday and said, “We will hear it provided all parties agree.”
Presently, there is a stay imposed by Court on any dredging activity around the Rama Sethu. Alternately, the Court had asked the Centre to consider the feasibility of an alternate route for the project, without disturbing the Rama Sethu, owing to its religious significance.
The alternate route proposed extended from the east of Dhanushkodi to lands End on Rameswaram Island. In 2008, an Expert Committee headed by the then The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) Director General RK Pachauri was tasked to study all aspects of the alternate route. Pachauri was helped by eminent experts from the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, National Institute of Oceanography, Geological Survey of India, and representatives of the Tamil Nadu Government.
The Pachauri Committee raised questions on the “Alignment 4A” (proposed alternate route) and Alignment 6 (cutting through the Ram Sethu) finding both to be economically and ecologically non-feasible. The project adopting Alignment 4A, it held, “could potentially result in ecological threats that could pose a risk to ecosystems in the surrounding area, and in particular to the biosphere reserve.”
On both set of alignments, the expert body was of the view that it would fail the benchmark internal rate of return (IRR) of 12 per cent prescribed for such scenarios.. In the result, the Committee said, “It is unlikely that the public interest would be served by pursuing the project on the basis of Alignment 4A.”
Giving a go-by to the expert body’s advice, that threatened to stall the project in its present form, the Centre in an affidavit filed in Supreme Court said, “The Government of India does not accept the conclusions and recommendations of the Pachauri Committee” and decided to go ahead with the original plan to dismantle the Sethu.
The mythological Ram Sethu is a continuous stretch of limestone shoals that runs from Pamban Island near Rameshwaram in South India to Mannar Island off the northern coast of Sri lanka. The present Government shelved the plan to destroy the Sethu taking into consideration its religious significance.