SC allows increase in Narmada dam height
On July 10, 2006, the Supreme Court (SC) refused to stop construction work going on at the controversial Sardar Sarovar Dam to raise its height. In April 2006, Narmada Bachao Andolan had moved the apex court asking for a stay on raising the height of the dam, in view of inadequate measures taken by the Madhya Pradesh government towards rehabilitation of the project-affected people.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh had constituted a committee, headed by V K Shunglu, former comptroller and auditor general, to study relief and rehabilitation provided to the project-affected people. The three-member committee, along with a 100-member National Sample Survey Organisation team, surveyed the project-affected families to find out the number of people who received cash and land as compensation. The mammoth task took the teams to 26,000 families in 177 villages.
The Shunglu committee submitted its report to Singh on July 3, 2006. It said state government records reported that out of 4,200 families, 3,800 had received cash compensation. Singh found the committee's report fairly accurate and submitted it to the SC and recommended that dam construction should go on as it was for everybody's benefit.
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