Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) Ombusdman on Friday submitted before the Kerala High Court that the Kerala Industrial and Technical Consultancy Organisation (KITCO) informed him that the project report on Aranmula airport was manipulated by the promoters and it had never suggested any kind of alteration of any places of worship near the project area.
Ombudsman Justice R Bhaskaran filed the additional report in response to a suo motu proceedings by the HC on the issue regarding lowering of flag-mast of the Aranmula Parthasarathy Temple.
When the project report become a controversy, KITCO representatives appeared before the Ombudsman and clarified their role in conducting studies and preparation of the pre-feasibility report for the project. KITCO made it clear that there was no reference to lowering the flag-mast or displacement of the ‘gopuram’ of the temple in their report.
The project report of the airport that was being widely quoted and reported in the media as that of KITCO was a drastically modified version of a pre-feasibility report. KITCO had prepared a pre-feasibility report in 2009. The report had covered mainly the financial feasibility aspects of the project, stated a clarification letter submitted by KITCO before the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman produced a copy of the letter before the High Court.
KITCO pointed out that detailed technical aspects of the project, like obstacle survey, were not included in its scope of study. The airport was then conceived as a small airport to cater to small aircraft with an overall project cost of `100 crore in the first phase.
“Now it seems KGS has revised and altered the report many times on their own. The copies of the project report of the airport collected from Pathanamthitta District Collectorate through an RTI query, show that it was a modified version of our report with many pages/chapters taken out and re-written. The alterations they had made and included in the report are without the consent of KITCO,” the letter pointed out.
In the modified report, it seems the details of an obstacle survey conducted by an agency hired by the promoter of the project was included. KITCO claims that the page number 34 of the original report prepared by it never contained a suggestion to reduce the height of the temple flag-mast, as highlighted in page number 34 of the ‘modified’ report. “As a responsible public sector consultancy organisation which has been in the service of the nation for the past 40 years, KITCO would never associate itself with any move that hurt the sentiments of people,” KITCO said.
Considering the submissions of the Ombudsman, the HC suo motu impleaded KITCO as additional respondent in the case and posted the hearing of the case to January 1.