Additional principal Secretary(Environment) P K Mohanty implicated in DLF violations
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief secretary Bharath Bhushan has found CRZ violations in the construction of DLF Riverside housing project in Kochi. In his report, three top officials, including additional principal secretary (environment) P.K. Mohanty, have been charged with "highly irregular action." The report was tabled by Environment Minister Thiruvanchoor Radkhakrishnan in the Assembly on Wednesday.
The report, however, says that the issue could be settled more conclusively only after examining certain technical issues. The minister announced that a three-member committee would study the technical issues involved and submit its report in 15 days. The members are Dr K. Padmakumar, head of the department of fisheries, Kerala University; Dr Alappat Ramachandran, CUSAT and Dr Kamalakshan Kokkal, principal scientific officer, KSCSTE.
The chief secretary's report states that the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) had wrongly taken up the DLF case even without the environment and CRZ clearances. The SEIAA had indulged in obfuscation too. It ignored the adverse observations made by the Expert Appraisal Committee of the MoEF against the project and instead used the minutes of an earlier meeting of the EAC to favour the builder.
The decision of the Coastal Zone Management Authority chairman V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai not to depute the authority's member secretary to the EAC meeting has kept the MoEF in the dark about the project, the report said. As a result, relevant files related to the project were transferred from MoEF without any specific recommendation to the SEIAA where, the report says, "obliging hands were waiting."
The report also described as "peculiar" the decision of the builder to directly approach additional chief secretary (environment) P.K. Mohanty who, in deference to the builder, sent out a direction to KCZMA chairman to withdraw the stop-memo clamped on the construction. "KCZMA acting with great alacrity withdrew the stop-memo the very next day. The chairman has no powers to withdraw or cancel the decision of the authority on his own. The action of both officials is highly irregular," the report said.
