NEW DELHI/HYDERABAD:In an irony of sorts, documents submitted by the Telangana government for environment clearance for the Yadadri Thermal Power Station in Nalgonda district have been found to be plagiarized. The Union government has therefore rejected the application for clearance of the project.
In addition to being plagiarized, the documents also furnished irrelevant content and contained no crucial site- and plant-specific analysis.
It was just two months ago that the Telangana government had accused Andhra Pradesh of copying its information and templates for the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) evaluation and even lodged a police complaint.
In the present case, the documents were submitted by the Telangana State Power Generation Corporation Ltd. (TSGENCO) to the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) seeking green clearance for the 4000 MW supercritical coal-based power station is it seeking to build in Veerlapalem village in Nalgonda district.
In a meeting held on August 29-30, the MoEF’s expert appraisal committee (EAC) on thermal power and coal mining projects found that the environment impact assessment (EIA) report submitted by the Telangana government was plagiarized. Chunks of paragraphs were lifted from a report titled ‘Hazards Identification and Risk Assessment in Thermal Power Plant’ published in the International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT) Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2014. The authors of the report were Ruchi Shrivastava and Praveen Patel.
The committee said that it received several complaints about plagiarism and copy-paste material in the EIA. Upon examination, it found several such instances.
The EAC also detected several incorrect or irrelevant statements in the final EIA report. Giving an example, in a section titled Occupational Health and Safety the project proponent said: “As a small business owner one has certain rights and responsibilities regarding health and safety in the workplace.” Describing a 4000 mw project as a “small business” is quite a stretch.
The committee also said the EIA report as well as subsequent responses by the project proponent indicated substantial confusion and lack of details regarding actual coal unloading and transportation arrangements.
“At some places, it is mentioned that coal will be transported from two ports. In some other places, four ports are mentioned. Hence, complete and specific details regarding coal-import ports and coal transportation routes need to be provided,” the EAC said in the minutes of the meeting.
It also observed that two important sections of the EIA report -- risk assessment and disaster management plan -- are almost entirely generic and contain hardly any site- or project-specific aspects.