A meeting of the Southern Zonal Council comprising Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry was held in Bangalore on Nov16 presided over by Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde. The meeting was attended by Chief Ministers of the states concerned except Tamil Nadu. The southern states, which are competing among themselves to attract investments by offering different types of incentives, will now come together to offer a uniform package for industry. They have agreed to reach “unanimity” on the incentives to be offered, the Union Minister said briefing reporters after the meeting. There was competition among states in reducing taxes and extending concessions. The competition led to investor indulging in bargaining for and securing concession that might affect the state’s finances. There is no unanimity in such schemes and industries are playing one state against another to garner liberal incentives far in excess of the investments made by them and the benefits that would accrue to the state on account of such investments. This results in the investing business house exploiting the finance of the state and profiting at the cost of people. One suggestion that emerged in the meeting was constituting a standing committee, consisting of the Finance Secretaries and commissioners of Commercial Taxes of the southern states to recommend common industrial incentives.
The meeting discussed the problems in inter-state transport, and the states agreed to hold talks in a bid to resolve the issues. Another decision was to establish a nodal agency in each state to prevent trafficking in women and children, besides an exclusive court to try such cases.
All these are retold only to point out the importance of the deliberations and decisions made at the conference which was not attended by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha, because she was ‘preoccupied’ with very, very busy work of “affixing her signature in a letter to the Centre (about objectionable references to Nadar community in a CBSC textbook) and another announcement, with no official in-wait for posing for photograph of seeking her “blessings’ on transferred posting. Instead she deputed her ministers O.Panneerselvam and Natham R.Viswanathan to read out her prepared speech. People of Tamil Nadu, who are familiar with the capabilities and contributions (!) of ADMK ministers, can very well understand what would have been the contributions of these two hapless ADMK ministers to the proceedings and decisions of the conference.
What would have been the thrust of Jayalalitha’s speech would also be familiar to the people of the state. Yes! As expected of her, the report on her speech faithfully published by the subservient ‘The New Indian Express’ on Nov17 read as: Jayalalitha trained her guns on the Centre, saying the current structure of the National Power Grid was getting in way of benefiting from the National Power Market. She also reiterated the demands she had made in her letters to the Prime Minister, asking him for additional power allocation for TN……She added that her government had drawn up a detailed strategy to make TN a power surplus state through massive capacity addition and expediting ongoing power projects as well as sanctioned ones….Her speech also touched upon problems on infrastructure projects due to holdups in environmental clearance from the Centre.”
But, are the claims of Jayalalitha true? No, not at all. The difference between Kalaignar and Jayalalitha regarding the performance and achievements of the governments led by them, is while Kalaignar always speaks and writes with concrete evidence, details and figures, Jayalalitha speaks from vacuum and makes empty rhetorics. She herself would have lost count of the number of times she had vowed to take Tamil Nadu to numero uno position in India. But every time she comes to power in the state, Tamil Nadu had slid down in the order of development.
She has so far announced not a single tangible power project in the last one and a half year nor during her previous regimes. Still she has the tenacity to claim in this meeting as well as in the Assembly (of course, after evicting the inconvenient DMK members) that she ‘had drawn a detailed strategy to make TN a power surplus state through ‘massive capacity addition’ and expediting ongoing projects and sanctioning new projects’.
How dubious is her claim of ‘expediting ongoing projects’ is also very well known not only to the people of TN but also the whole of India. But for her intransigence of sabotaging every good work done by the DMK rule, the Kudankulam imbroglio would not have happened and the Nuclear Power plant would have started generation of power in December last year itself.
On the day her speech at the Bangalore meeting was reported in dailies (Nov17), there was another report in all newspapers,’ “High Court clears hurdles for Mettur Power plant work”.
The Madras High Court has permitted the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) to complete the 600MW thermal power project in Mettur, which had been delayed due to an order of the Tirupur District Collector, suggesting an eleventh hour change in the power transmission route.
Though the Mettur plant was ready to generate 600MW power by March 2012, it could not be utilised as the Tirupur Collector had ordered a change in the transmission route after 90% of the project work was completed at a cost of 3, 000 crore. The 110-km project involved erecting 324 supporting towers. At the time of abrupt change of route only nine towers remained to be erected. Began in January 2010, the project was to be completed by October 2011. In July 2011, a new Collector to the district directed the TNEB to change the route and proceed along an alternative route.
In April this year, a single judge rejected the pleas of farmers from Sundakampalayam and Nambiyampalayam villages in Avinashi taluk in Tirupur district. Upholding the single judge order on Friday, the first bench comprising Chief Justice M Y Eqbal and Justice T S Sivagnanam said: “When the experts, namely the officials of the TNEB, took a definite stand that the original route which was proposed was technically more feasible and it would be in the interest of the public and since the route was along the existing panchayat road, we find there is absolutely no justification for the Collector to issue an order changing the route, which was not found to be technically feasible by experts.”
Survey for acquisition of lands for laying electricity line route started in June 2010, and the then Collector held a public hearing in July 2010. At the end of the meeting, the Collector announced that the project would proceed as per the original route plan. However, when the project was at an advanced stage, the Collector was transferred, and the new Collector approved the second route though 90% of the project had been completed by then.
The first bench said: “The entire work has been completed except for nine out of the 324 towers, and at this stage it would be improper for the Collector to alter the route, and adopt an alternate route which was found technically feasible. It is stated that the expenses incurred so far is about 150 crore for erecting lines, apart from 3,000 crore spent for construction of the thermal power plant at Mettur.
Citing the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 and the Electricity Act, 2003 provisions, the judges further said: “We are also of the definite opinion that the District Collector has no authority to change the alignment and to give a new route for transmission of electricity, especially when the experts of the electricity board asserted that the original alignment was the best alignment in the interest of the public at large.”
The division bench also dismissed a batch of appeals from Sri Vignesh Yarns Private Limited in Tiruppur and two other individuals that challenged a common order passed by a single judge on April 24, 2012.
According to the original route approved by the board officials and the Tirupur Collector, the lines and towers would be erected mostly on the panchayat roads without affecting too many farmers’ agricultural lands.
Later, the Collector was transferred and the person who took over called for a meeting, passed an order changing the alignment and directed the implementation of the second route.
When experts of the board took a definite stand that the original route that was said to be technically more feasible would be in the interest of the public as it was along the existing panchayat roads, there was no justification for the route to be changed to one that was not found feasible by experts, said the bench.
The work had been completed except for nine towers in Avinashi taluk and at that stage it would be improper for the Collector to alter the route and adopt an alternate one.
The expenses incurred so far were about Rs.150 crore for erecting lines, apart from Rs.3,000 crore for the construction of the new thermal power plant at Mettur and the power that had to be routed through its supply line was to provide uninterrupted power to both agricultural and industrial development.
Because of the delay, the power line could not be erected in time though the power plant was ready to generate about 600MW by the end of March, the bench said.
What do the details of this case show? The 600 MW Mettur Thermal Power Plant mooted, funded and executed by the previous DMK rule was ready for generating 600 MW of power, badly needed for the western districts of Tirupur, Erode and Coimbatore which are now experiencing 14 hour power cut everyday. But after the ADMK assumed power in May 2011, the District Collector of Tirupur was transferred and a pliable IAS officer was posted as Collector ostensibly to sabotage the project at the behest of Jaya regime. Otherwise a district collector would not have had the courage to convene a second meeting for eliciting public opinion and decide on and direct the State owned TNEB to change the route for laying just nine of the 324 towers incurring loss of Rs. 150 crore spent for erecting the towers and Rs.3000 crore, the cost of the project. The Chief Minister of the State, under whom both the district collector and TNEB function, did not seem to intervene and settle the dispute between two arms of the State government particularly when TN was facing unprecedented power shortage. She did not intervene at least after the single Judge of the High Court gave a favourable judgement for the TNEB in April 2012 and remained as a passive spectator when some individuals (definitely having clout with the ADMK regime) went on appeal. Is it due to her inefficiency or audacity and indifference to the plight of people of the state in the pursuit of her personal agenda of political vengeance?
This shows how false is her claim of ‘expediting ongoing power projects’ made at the Council meeting.
And her another claim of ‘problems on infrastructure projects due to holdups in environmental clearance from the Centre’ is also not true. If at all there were any problems, she must have attended the council’s second meeting held on Nov.20 at Bangalore which discussed credit needs of southern states. Probably she skipped the meeting because she would lose her face when the meeting discussed the progress of Central schemes/projects in southern states. The opposite of her claim of holdups in infrastructural projects due to Centre is true.
While in neighboring states, despite changes in the government, many projects continue. But with the change to a sadistic regime in Tamil Nadu, the infrastructural projects started during the previous DMK rule with and without assistance from the Centre have been put on hold by the ADMK regime. They include the Rs.1,815 crore elevated expressway project from Chennai Port to Maduravoyal which will reduce traffic congestion in the city and drastically reduce the time of travel for heavy vehicles to and from Port and also for motorists of the city; the Chennai High Speed Circular Transportation Corridor that was to take from Adyar and connect with Chennai bypass; formation of bicycle tracks by Chennai Corporation in Adyar and Besant Nagar areas and 8km stretch of arterial roads in Anna Nagar for students of schools.
And recently on Nov10, the TN government ordered stoppage of work on the 374 core Tiruchy-Karaikudi National Highway project implemented by the Centre. Citing ‘objections and opposition from local farmers’, who apprehended loss of irrigation water sources, a senior engineer of the Water Resources Organisation asked the National Highway Authority of India officials at the site to stop work on Nov10. The project which would link six national highway stretches in the region, involves construction of a two-lane path with paved shoulders in the Tiruchy-Karaikudi section of NH-210. The 84 km stretch includes 25km of Tiruchy bypass on NH-67. Launched in 2010, the project was to be completed by May, 2013.
With such being the dismal record of the Reckless ADMK regime, Jayalalitha in spite of so much effort by the pliable media of the state, cannot for long hoodwink the people of Tamil Nadu by passing on blames to the previous rule and the Centre. The day will come when they will teach her a lesson!
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