NEW DELHI: The Centre on Wednesday trashed Supreme Court-appointed high powered committee (HPC) chairman Ravi Chopra’s attempts to link recent Uttarakhand flash floods to the widening of roads for the Char Dham project in an eco-fragile zone and told the court that it was a “unilateral” expression of “baseless and unwarranted” views.
In its December 31 report to the SC, 16 HPC members had approved the Char Dham project and widening of roads up to 10 metres. Chopra and two others opposed widening of roads beyond a width of 5.5 metres.
In its January 15 affi davit, the Centre termed Chopra’s views as “personal” and “bereft of a holistic approach”, which required keeping in mind the need of armed forces, especially in view of India-China border standoff.
Attorney general K K Venugopal and solicitor general Tushar Mehta on Wednesday informed a bench of Justices R F Nariman, Hemant Gupta and Bhushan R Gavai about Chopra’s February 13 letter.
“Yesterday we received a letter from the chairman of the HPC, written on his own and linking the recent disaster to the Char Dham project. According to the defence ministry, the chairman’s observations in the letter are baseless and unwarranted. There is no link at all between the disaster and the project,” the AG said.
The bench accepted the AG’s request for two weeks to respond to the letter, in which Chopra said, “I am compelled to write this letter to the Supreme Court in light of the recent disaster in Uttarakhand’s Char Dham region. Thirty-six bodies have been recovered so far and over 170 people are reportedly missing.”
After the 2013 Kedarnath disaster caused by a cloudburst, the SC-appointed expert body (EB) headed by Chopra gave areport in April 2014 to the court on the disaster potential of hydroelectric projects on the Alaknanda river.
The EB report had highlighted the potential threat of paraglacial zones and emphasised that they were disaster-prone areas.