NGT issues notices to state, 2 of Butai family over twin hydro projects in Kullu’s Parvati Valley

Kullu: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has issued notices to key respondents on a petition filed against two hydro-electricity projects, which allegedly pose threat to the existence of a village and endanger wildlife in the Parvati valley of Kullu district.The notices have been issued to the Himachal Pradesh govt, several state and central departments, and two members of the business-political Butail family in Kangra's Palampur — Dinesh Butail and Beena Butail.The petition, filed by Chandresh Kumar, a resident of Thunja village located near Kasol, and Rohit Singh, a social activist, on behalf of the villagers, stated that the two small hydro projects, each of 5 MW capacity, being built on the Grahan rivulet, violate environmental norms and wildlife laws.The petitioners also accused the proponents of the hydro projects — Dinesh Butail, a prominent tea grower and businessman, and his relative Beena Butail, the wife of veteran Congress leader Brij Bihari Butail and the mother of Palampur Congress MLA Ashish Butail — of "regulatory evasion" and deliberately hiding facts to avoid scrutiny and cumulative appraisal of the project.Members of 15 families who live in Thunja, located on a steep and geologically fragile slope, depend on a lone spring-fed bauri, a traditional water source, for potable water and a nearby ghasini, a pasture land, for fodder.The petition alleged that project proponents began blasting and excavating headrace tunnels beneath the village without conducting slope stability, vibration, or disaster-risk studies, despite a 2016 Kullu administration report declaring the slope "not stable" for hydro projects.Seeking an immediate halt to work on the "unstable terrain," it warned of a serious threat to Thanuja villagers, their property and water security, and urged urgent NGT intervention.The petition alleged that the Kasol and Grahan-Kasol small hydro projects, owned by Beena Butail and Dinesh Butail, respectively, function as a single unit, sharing the same slope, Grahan Nala stream and blasting corridor, and operating from the same Palampur address. It claimed the use of two different stream names — Kasol Nadi and Grahan Nala — was a "textbook case of project splitting" to evade cumulative appraisal and National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) scrutiny. Calling it a deliberate attempt to mask the combined 10 MW impact on a single stream, the petition said authorities, including the forest department, cleared the two 5 MW projects without proper verification, though they should have been assessed as one 10 MW project.The petition alleged that both projects lie within 2.7 km of the eco-sensitive zone of Kanwar Wildlife Sanctuary. It claimed the proponents and the state wildlife department cited inconsistent and fabricated distances from the sanctuary boundary — 5 metres in 2015 and 40–500 metres in 2024 — on the basis of which a Wildlife Mitigation Plan was approved in 2024.The plan, it added, lacked GIS-based boundary verification, a wildlife movement study, and any assessment of the impact of blasting and construction on wildlife in the eco-sensitive zone.While praying to the tribunal to quash the clearance under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), the petition further claimed that the proponent also misclassified the Grahan-Kasol hydro project as a linear project instead of a non-linear project, which involves site-specific permanent structures such as powerhouses and tunnels, to bypass the mandatory Gram Sabha approval of Thanuja village and avoid the statutory process.The petitioners prayed to the tribunal to quash the Wildlife Mitigation Plan, order the proponents to undertake a unified, cumulative impact assessment of the projects, and order scrutiny by the Standing Committee of the NBWL.While observing that "substantial issues relating to compliance of environmental norms have been raised in the petition", NGT chairperson justice Prakash Shrivastava ordered notices be served to the respondents in the case, including chief secretary; principal chief conservator of forests; secretary, Jal Shakti Vibhag; chief engineer, HP State Electricity Board Limited; Kullu deputy commissioner; Himurja director; ministry of environment and forest and climate change; member secretary, NBWL; and the two members of Butail family. MSID:: 128508975 413 |