VIJAYAWADA: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) petitioner Pandalaneni Srimannarayana, who is continuing his legal battle against the state government for construction of capital on Krishna river bank on the ground that it would sound a death-knell to the environment, on Thursday contended that the stay order issued by the NGT in early October still held good and that neither the government nor the CRDA had any business to take up any type of activity in the entire capital region area.
Speaking to newsmen here, he condemned the destruction of the banana plantation of a farmer who did not give up his land under the Land Pooling Scheme and termed it as yet another case of violation of the NGT’s stay order. “Leave alone destroying crops on private land, neither the CRDA nor the Government can lift a fistful of earth even from the land that has been surrendered under the LPS since there is a stay order and the issue at stake is the possible damage the construction of capital would do to environment”, he said.
Srimannaryayana said that he had filed two petitions in the NGT, one of which sought a direction to the government to halt all activities in the Capital Region as there were no environmental clearances for the same as the NGT had already given its stay orders.
The second petition was with regard to the contempt proceedings that the NGT had initiated against the CRDA for violating the stay orders. “I will continue my fight,” Srimannarayana said and added that the NGT had dismissed the argument of the CRDA that it had obtained necessary environmental clearances and therefore the case should be dismissed.
But the NGT, on the other hand, told the CRDA that its petition itself was infructuous since there were no documents in support of its claim that all enviornment clearances had been obtained.
The petitioner said that the clearances that the CRDA had talked about in its petition related to the clearances that had been given by the state-level agency of the Union Ministry of Environment clearance. For any area of more than 1.7 km radius, the clearance should be obtained from the Centre and for that the state had to follow an elaborate procedure of calling objections, which would take up a major part of an year.