After discovering today’s reports, we asked the more experienced folks for their inputs. During the day, Himanshu Thakkar of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, called up the journalist in-charge of the Reuter’s report and later shared his experience through a Facebook post, quoted here:

“I called up the journalist who wrote it, I told him the Env clearance does not exist, final forest clearance does not exist, conditional Wild Life Clearance is under scrutiny by CEC to be followed by SC scrutiny and inter state agreement between MP and UP does not exist. The recommendation of Env Clearance (the actual EC letter is yet to be issued, see the attached screen shot of MoEF’s EC website) is no longer valid since both Forest and Wildlife clearance recommendation are conditional to taking the power component out of the forest/ protected area, but the EC recommendation is for the power component of the project remaining inside the forest/ protected area. The Project does not even have any public hearings in the canal and downstream affected areas, as required and the EIA by AFCL is one of the most flawed, dishonest impact assessments.

I told him he could have checked these facts from the concerned ministries or others who keep track of these things, before publishing the report. He had not. He said he will try to find out about reality of clearances from the ministry.

He said they worked on the story for a month, I said in that case, they should have checked the claims about clearances, when you had so much time.

The only defence he had was that clearances are CLAIMED in the Cabinet note and he asked me, will the govt claim clearances in cabinet note if they do not have? I told him, of course, as per Free Press Report quoting sources from MoEF, the WR minister has in fact misguided the Parliament, the Cabinet note is not even a statutory document.“

A dried up Ken river in UP, downstream of proposed dam site, June 2017.