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Koya Tribe Appeal Against Polavaram Dam డిసెంబరు 25, 2007

Posted by bharath in Appeals, Godavari, Koya, Polavaram.
1 comment so far
The National Environmental Appellate Authority on 19 December has quashed the clearance granted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to the Polavaram multipurpose project. NEAA declared the environmental clearance unacceptable because it was based on incomplete and inadequate consultation with the affected people.It lacked consent of the people it is meant for.
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The same project was stalled two years ago by AP High Court as there was no consent for the project that is awarded to the contractors who commenced work on the dam whose designs were not known to or cleared by any authority. Subsequently environment clearance was obtained by ‘constructing’ consent to the disastrous dam in great haste under political pressure of YSR government. That clearance was a mockery, alleged by civil society and environment activists and adivasi groups, is proved by the NEAA declaring the ‘clearance’ unacceptable.
  
Prof Sivaji Rao, environment expert, described it as a killer dam.  
Several NGOs and peoples organisations resisted the dam since mid eighties on ecological, economic and social grounds. 
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YSR government started implementing the project with manifold cost escalations, hundred design deviations and thousand lies without a single clearance from any authority as part of the contractors’ raj and its pet scheme – Jala Yagnam in Andhra Pradesh. Jalayagnam plans to irrigate one crore acres at a cost of one lakh rupees per acre! and all that before the next elections!! just one  lakh crores to go down the drain in a record time!!!
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What the people think of this dam was declared by Koya community more than a decade ago. The Appeal is presented here from archives

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Lokayan Bulletin 11:5, 1995 (pp 82 -86)  

APPEAL 

To Withdraw Polavaram Dam   

We, the people of eight villages of Motu Tehsil (Malkangiri district, Orissa), Konta Tehsil (Bastar district, Madhya Pradesh) and Chintur Mandal (Khammam district, Andhra Pradesh), are writing this letter to you, the Chief Secretary/ Chief Minister of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh. 

We are Koitor (Koya, a scheduled tribe) people living on the banks of the Godavari and its tributaries – Sileru and Sabari. We have come to know that the AP government is planning to build a large dam across the Godavari river at Polavaram, and that the governments of Orissa and Madhya Pradesh have given consent to it. We have also learnt that the AP government is giving utmost importance to this project and that it is awaiting clearances from the Central Water Commission, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Ministry of Welfare, etc. 

We are highly displeased that the three state governments have been pursuing this project in secrecy from us – a project that threatens to take away our lands, homes, trees, places of worship and to disintegrate our society. 

We also believe that the AP government is trying to get all the clearances on the basis of false information. The information it is giving about displacement, the loss of assets, flora & fauna, and the opinion of the people in the submergence area are false. The project authorities are claiming the submergence of 250 settlements in three states. Actually, around 365 settlements would be affected. A recent study by the Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad, made for the AP Irrigation Department, identified 276 settlements coming under submergence in AP alone. The claims of the benefits of the project are also shifting – first, it was primarily to irrigate lands in East & West Godavari districts which are relatively well irrigated, and now the AP government says that it is mainly for power generation. 

We, the people of the region that is going to be submerged by the Polavaram project declare that we are not in favour of this dam and that we have never given our consent to it. We do not approve of this project for the following reasons: 

1.      The project which threatens to submerge about 350 settlements at 150 ft contour would disturb and destroy our habitat and our collective identity and life as Koya people. It would displace about two lakh people out of which the tribal population is around 1,25,000.  (ఇంకా…)