CHENNAI: The Leader of the Opposition in the Kerala Assembly, VD Satheesan on Wednesday claimed that he was always in favour of the Madhav Gadgil committee report. His remarks comes against the backdrop of the landslides in Wayanad which claimed over 300 lives.
The Gadgil committee report had recommended doing away with mining activities in the ecologically sensitive districts like Wayanad.
"I was an MLA when the report came out. At that time, some of us legislators from the UDF were in favour of the report," he told TNIE.
Satheesan pointed out that the Western Ghats is already under threat from a lot of quarrying activities and climate change. Against this backdrop, the Gadgil report had many good recommendations. It also suggested that there should be a discussion on the recommendations right from the panchayat level. But there was a camapign against it following which the farmers in the hilly districts feared that they will be evicted from their lands. This led to the government shelving the report, Satheesan noted.
"Even in the Assembly, we had taken a stand in favour of Gadgil report when it came up for discussion. But unfortunately the whole house, expect for a few from our side and one person from the opposition was against the report...."
He agreed that steps are needed to protect the Western Ghats. Now, the LDF government has issued more licenses to quarries there. Whenever they get license to mine five acres, they will quarry fifty acres. The licensees are violating and exploiting the situation, he pointed out.
Then there is also the challenge of climate change...The government has no mechanism to warn the people on natural calamities like what has happened in Wayanad, he said.
He was sceptical about the LDF government led by Pinarayi Vijayan taking any action in the light of the Wayanad landslides to prevent or warn people in advance against such catastrophes in the future. He insisted on a permanent system, a scientific mechanism, which should be in place to warn the people. But what the government does is carry out rescue and rehabilitation works and forget about it, Satheesan added.
In the coming days, policies should be framed keeping climate change in mind. This is one of the reasons that why the Congress party opposed the K-Rail project which is pending before the Centre. The Congress-led UDF in the state had appointed a committee to study the K-Rail and coastal highway projects. The committee submitted its report before the UDF. It is on this basis a letter was shot off to the Chief Minister to reconsider these projects.
Before undertaking any projects, there should be proper environmental impact and social impact studies. Otherwise the economically weaker section of the population would be at the receiving end, Satheesan noted.