TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: The process of granting a prior Environmental Clearance for the controversial Golf Course and Resort Villas project for which the entire village of Tiracol was “bought”, is riddled with missing links, missing minutes and false declarations. Herald during its investigations into the process of granting the Environmental Clearance to Leading Hotels Limited, has found two false declarations in the document granting the Environmental Clearance to the company.
The EC was given to the project, which includes a Golf Course, Standard Resort Villas and Premium Resort Villas on the basis of one of the two meetings of the Goa State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA), dated April 1 and April 12, 2013. The agenda of the first meeting dated April 1 (Eighth meeting) and minutes (available with Herald) are of other projects and not the Golf Course project of Leading Hotels. The meeting of April 12 was called to take the “final decision” to grant the EC. So one of the main facts in the official letter of granting the EC, is clearly false.
It also states that the EC was based on the recommendations of the State Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC), based on site visits. One of the members of the SEAC Savita Kerkar, a Goa University professor, told Herald that she had raised several objections to the project during the site inspection, after which there were no minutes circulated on which she or any of the other members have affixed their signatures, at a formal meeting. The Herald scrutinized all the minutes of the SEAC from August 2012 to April 8, 2013 (8th meeting to 14th meeting) on the website of the Department of Science and Technology. This project has not been discussed in any of these meetings. Interestingly, meeting number 15 is missing on the website, which coincides with the exact period when the EC was granted and the next meeting – number 16 is in February 2014.
The Herald met Dr Mohan Girap, the Secretary of the SEAC to ask him on what basis was the project cleared. He claimed, “The SEAC met and gave its recommendations. We had raised some objections with regard to the intake of ground water and use of pesticides and these were replied to satisfactorily by Leading Hotels.” When asked where were the minutes of this meeting detailing that the SEAC had deliberated and were satisfied with the environmental parameters of the project, he promised to email them. The mail was not sent till the time of going to press.
Savita Kerkar, a member of the same committee contradicts this saying, “I do not know of any meeting on this. Nor have I received a copy of any minutes on this issue. If a decision was taken directly by putting it up to the three-member SEIAA which took a decision we do not know.”
This itself is a clear deviation from all projects where there is a clear two step process which is recorded and minutes uploaded on the website. The first is the meeting of the SEAC followed by a meeting of the SEIAA. Here one of the meetings quoted in the letter of granting the EC, does not even discuss the project and there are no minutes of the meeting of the SEAC.
The former is a larger, 10 to 15 members, body consisting of professors and environmental experts, who conduct site inspections and file reports and recommendations to the SEIAA. The SEIAA consists of the Chairman of the Pollution Control Board who is the Chairman, the member secretary and an additional member.
Levinson Martins, then Member Secretary of the SEIAA who signed the letter granting the EC told Herald, “We were satisfied with the company’s compliance to all the observations of the SEAC and the SEIAA was satisfied to grant the EC.”
The minutes of the 9th meeting of the SEIAA on April 12, 2013 when the decision to grant the EC contained some interesting bits of information
a) The meeting was convened at a “very short notice”
b) The “authority” in response to a “request” by the project proponent (Leading Hotels) has “re-examined” the project
c) The project as classified as a Category B project “for which General Conditions are not applicable and has accordingly decided to grant prior EC”
While in letter, the project is above board, as it has the stamp of authority, it is the manner in which this was granted and false bits of information that are being revealed, that make it to be scrutinized even more carefully, since the entire village of Tiracol has been taken over by one private party for this project.
