No decision to suspend dam work: PMO

The Supreme Court has closed all arguments regarding Narmada dam: Arun Jaitley.

Struggling to keep pace with politics, which has overtaken the issue of raising the height of the Narmada dam, the Prime Minister's Office today said no decision had been taken to suspend construction work at the project.

The statement came after a group of BJP and Congress MPs from Gujarat met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The prime minister had received the report of the review committee of the Narmada Control Authority and recommendations of Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz, PMO spokesman Sanjaya Baru said.

"No decision has been taken," he said, adding that there was no question of going against the Supreme Court verdict on the matter.

The confusion was caused by Soz's statement yesterday that work on raising the dam height would be halted.

However, by the time the PMO stepped in, the damage was done. Gujarat saw a partial bandh following Chief Minister Narendra Modi's charge that the Centre was in league with the Narmada Bachao Andolan and might intervene to prevent Gujarat from getting its due share of water even after the height of the dam was raised.

An all-party delegation met the prime minister today and told him that Narmada was the lifeline of the state and the decision of the Narmada Control Authority to raise the dam's height should not be reviewed as it was taken "unanimously".

"The Supreme Court has closed all arguments regarding construction of the dam and work on the project should not stop," BJP General Secretary and Rajya Sabha member from the state, Arun Jaitley, told reporters.

Flanked by Gujarat Congress President Bharat Solanki, he said, "The prime minister appeared to agree with our plea."

The PMO said the prime minister had received the recommendations of the review committee of the Narmada Control Authority, which were being studied.

Meanwhile, activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, sensing that they might not get a more favourable audience from the country ever again, courted arrest as they marched towards the prime minister's house, to demand that the Centre stop construction at the dam until the ousted were rehabilitated.

While the PMO said the report was "being studied", there was nothing new in what the review committee saw and heard. The report supports almost all the points the NBA has been making ""that those who have been ousted were, in many cases, duped into parting with their land; whereas the rule said that the ousted would get land in lieu of land, many of them accepted money and were reduced to penury; and those who refused to accept money in return for land got neither.

The report says that although there is a grievance redressal cell, headed by a retired high court judge, its office is in Bhopal, more than 500 km from the dam site. The judge, who is above 70, has said that he can hold hearings only in Bhopal.

Some points in the review committee's report are embarrassing for the Centre, a committee member told Business Standard. All the secretaries who were part of the Narmada Control Authority, which checks and endorses the state governments' rehabilitation plans, had earlier approved of the rehabilitation efforts, without checking the ground realities.

These include secretary, department of social justice and empowerment, secretary, department of environment and the water resources secretary. Therefore, the ministers' report contradicts the claims of their own secretaries.

The committee also found that the Madhya Pradesh government had violated a constitutional amendment that made it necessary for gram sabhas of all the villages from where people had been ousted to clear the rehabilitation plan. In several cases, the assent of the gram sabhas had not been recorded at all, or worse, had been inserted after work to raise the height of the dam began.

Because the Madhya Pradesh government is not Congress-led, it is not possible for the BJP to make an issue of it.

However, without making much effort, Modi has found an issue to reunite a communally polarised Gujarat and is likely to press home the advantage. Modi began a 51-hour hunger strike to pre-empt any decision to stop work at the site