The multipurpose project, involving a capital cost of over Rs 9,000 crore, includes a hydel power component of 960 MW as well as irrigation networks. It was to transfer 80,000 million cubic meters of water to the Krishna basin via a 174 km-long canal and to Vishakhapatnam district through another canal. The project proposes to irrigate 7.21 lakh acres in Krishna, Godavari and Vishakhapatnam districts, and generate about 960 MW electricity. Water from this project was to feed the proposed Vizag-Kakinada Industrial Corridor; two Special Economic Zones and the Apparel Park.

If the project had come through, it would have displaced 2 lakh people in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Chhattisgarh.

The project was opposed on the ground that the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was inadequate and that no public hearing was conducted in Orissa and Chhattisgarh where the property of an estimated 3,000 families were to be submerged.

The appeal against the clearance was filed by R Sreedhar of Academy for Mountain Environics, an NGO. Two states — Orissa and Chhattisgarh — became party to the appeal, contending that the clearance was granted by the Environment Ministry without considering the opinion of the states, despite large number of displacements.

The order of the appellate authority says: “It is evident that no public hearing was conducted in the affected areas of Orissa and Chhattisgarh. Neither did the affected persons have any access to the executive summary of the project in the notified place, nor did they have any opportunity to participate in public hearing and express their view on the environment impact of the area.”

The National Environmental Appellate Authority is the only competent authority, set up by an Act, to hear appeals from aggrieved/affected persons against the grant of environmental clearances by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to different projects across the country.

However, the appellate authority is a body under the Ministry of Environment and Forests itself and is headed by a former Director General of Forests.

The authority delivered its judgment on December 19 after hearing the case for about a year. The order was passed by a bench comprising of J C Kala, Dr I V Manivannan and Kaushlendra Prasad. According to Ritwick Dutta, Counsel for Academy for Mountain Environics and coordinator of Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE), “ this is the first instance in the ten years of working of the NEAA that an environmental clearance granted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests has been quashed, and therefore, is truly a historic decision.”

The Andhra Pradesh, meanwhile, will have to either negotiate with the two states or will have to change the design of the project — in both cases, the project is slated to be delayed indefinitely.