Supreme Court sets Nov 15 for final hearing on Polavaram

New Delhi: A Supreme Court Bench, in a big relief to Andhra Pradesh, turned down the appeal of the Odisha and Telangana governments to review the submergence caused by the Polavaram backwaters afresh. No study was required into the matter as it was a settled issue, it observed. 

Earlier, counsel for the Centre, Pinky Anand, said there was no need for going in for a fresh study on the issue. The SC posted the case further to November 15 to hear on the plea of Odisha to renew stop-work-order. A three-judge bench of Justice Madan B Lokur, Justice Deepak Gupta and Justice S Abdul Nazeer has scheduled the application for final hearing.

The counsel told the court that a complete study was conducted on the Polavaram dam by former Central Water Commission member M Gopalkrishna on the direction of the apex court in 2011 and he also submitted the report. The counsel said there is no requirement for a further study on the project. However, in his argument, the Odisha government advocate said Odisha had objected to the Gopalkrishna report.

The Odisha government had filed an interlocutory application for quashing the July 2018 order of Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) allowing Andhra Pradesh to continue construction work on the Polavaram dam.

In the application, the Odisha government said that the project didn’t have valid environment clearance and the Union government had issued stop work order to Andhra Pradesh in February 2011. It further stated that the stop work order has been kept in abeyance by the MoEF on yearly basis since July 2015.