By IANS,
Bhubaneswar : A network of civil society organisations Monday urged authorities to re-visit the environment impact assessment (EIA) carried out for different projects in Odisha, as many of those “undervalued” the damage.
Water Initiatives Odisha (WIO), a network of civil society organizations, which has been working on water-related issues in the state said the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has recently confirmed that “consultants” are including “cooked data” in the key EIA reports.
“We have been saying this since quite a long time. Now with the vindication of the same by NGT, the authorities should re-look to the reports on the basis of which clearances were given to some big ticket projects in the state,” WIO convenor Ranjan Panda told IANS.
“Now that the NGT has pointed out such malpractices, we urge upon both the state and central governments to revisit the reports of industrial projects, at least of some major projects like POSCO,” Panda said.
“Let there be an open public audit of the reports of such projects with independent people being given charge of screening those, and experts from different fields along with people from the locality giving their views,” said Panda.
“Let the government have the guts to cancel the reports if they are found ‘forged’, ‘cooked’ and ‘insufficient’, and call for fresh EIA reports and public hearings,” added Panda.