Protect Ramasetu. Scrap Sethu channel project — Ramsetu Protection Movement

13
VSK TN
    
 
     
Rameshwaram
Ramsetu Protection Movement,
12, MV Naidu
Street, Chennai 600031
President: S.
Kalyanaraman Secretary: D. Kuppuramu

Protect
Ramasetu, abandon setu channel project for national security and enhance lives
of coastal people.
UPA
Government together with the DMK of Tamilnadu should not attempt to revive the
Setu channel project which has been declared to be an ecological and economic
disaster by the Pachauri Committee.
We
demand that there should be increased security in the Indian Ocean region of
Sethusamudram in the context of increased Chinese naval presence in the Ocean
and to safeguard the maritime traffic passing through the Indian Ocean.
We
demand projects be implemented URGENTLY to provide livelihood opportunities for
coastal people. The context is the recent changes to Law of the Sea which
extends territorial waters beyond 20 nautical miles from the shoreline and
creates a 200 nautical mile Special Maritime Economic Zone from the long
shoreline of 8000 kms of India. We demand that Marine cooperatives should be
formed, fishing berths enhanced to berth larger fishing vessels, provided with
air-conditioned storage facilities. Coastal people dependent upon coastal
aquaculture activities should be provided with larger boats which they can
navigate upto 200 nautical miles of Special Maritime Zone on three days and
nights fishing and aquaculture expeditions. 
Environmentalists
and marine biologists are aghast at the stand taken by the Centre before the
Supreme Court that it wished to go ahead with the Sethudamudram Ship Channel
Project (SSCP) in the original form, thereby rejecting the RK Pachauri
Committee report that had recommended an alternative alignment since the
proposed channel through the eco-sensitive Rama Sethu (Adam’s Bridge) was not
feasible economically and ecologically.
For
the Government of India to now reject it own committee’s report makes a mockery
of the rule of law in this country.
The
responsibility of a nation-state is to respect its own guidelines for approving
projects. The law required that environmental impact analysis should be carried
out for every project. The Pachauri committee thus constituted had gone into
the environmental issues after studying for two years and came up with ‘an
emphatic conclusion that this project is not ecologically feasible.’
Marine
economists argue that the Sethu project is not the only option for moving goods
between the east coast and the west. Container ports could be built at
Vizhinjam, Cochin and Tuticorin and freight corriors established from there
through the rest of the country. Similarly pipelines could be laid for
transporting oil and gas from the western ports to the east. Why go into a
project which will benefit only a very few navigating vessels carrying less than
30,000 tonnes because of the very shallow waters of Gulf of Mannar?
IIM,
Bangalore had done an economic analysis of the Sethu project and found it was
not economically feasible. Also, geologists have reported that the region is a
fragile marine reserve subject to volcanic and tectonic activity. Globally
famous tsunami expert Tad S. Murthy had cautioned that cutting through Adam’s
Bridge would case devastation of the coastline from Nagapattinam to Kollam in
the event of a tsunami.
Setuchannel
project was clearly envisaged to fill the pockets of politicos and foreign
dredging companies. Any effort to revive such an uneconomic and ecologically
disastrous project affecting the security and safety of the coastline near the
fragile Gulf of Mannar in Sethusamudram will meet with severe protests from the
coastal people of Tamil Nadu. Coastal People of Tamil Nadu congratulate the
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Smt. Dr. Jayalalithaa for taking a clear and
unequivocal stand in the Hon’ble Supreme Court declaring cancellation of the
Setuchannel project and protection for Rama setu declaring it as a National
Monument. Any mischievous political attempts of UPA Government supported by DMK
which has lost peoples’ support will invite protests which will throw out the
UPA Government from office.

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