UPA to review Setu project, but won't stop construction

New Delhi: Despite the Centre asking for three months to review the Sethusamudram shipping canal project after protests that the Ram Setu would destroy the ancient legacy of Lord Ram, Union Shipping Minister T R Baalu — who is from the DMK — made it clear this is no rollback.

Baalu said work on the Rs 2,427 crore Sethusamudram project was going apace and dredging work had been stalled only in the area of Adam's Bridge (Ram Setu) in view of the Supreme Court directive.

''The work on the project has not been affected by the Supreme Court's directive on September 14. Dredging work in the Adam's Bridge area, which was stalled on Friday, would resume only after the approval from the court,'' he said.

The minister had on Monday, issued a statement saying the Government would soon approach the apex court and obtain appropriate orders ''to continue working in this region (Adam's Bridge) also and is confident of completing the project at the earliest'.'

However, Baalu did not set a time-frame for moving the court, which had posted the case for further hearing in the first week of January next year. He, instead, referred to a Supreme Court judgement in Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) vs Union of India case in 2000.

''When such projects are undertaken and hundreds of crores of public money is spent, any individual organisation in the garb of PIL cannot be permitted to challenge the policy decision taken after a lapse of time. It is against the national interest and contrary to the established principles of law that decisions to undertake developmental projects are permitted to be challenged after a number of years during which period public money has been spent in the execution of the project,'' he was quoted as news agency UNI as saying.

Skirting the controversy on the historicity of Lord Ram and Ram Setu, he said, ''We are only concerned with the SSCP. We are committed to the project.''

The SSCP envisages dredging of a ship channel to connect the Gulf of Mannar and Bay of Bengal through Palk Bay so that the ships, moving between the East and West coast of India, would have a continuous navigable sea route around the peninsula within India's own territorial waters.

On completion, it will save up to 424 nautical miles of distance and up to 30 hours of sailing time for these ships.

(With inputs from UNI)