Ready to pay Rs 450 cr for dam: Centre to SC

R Sedhuraman

New Delhi, August 12

The Centre today told the Supreme Court that it was ready to pay Rs 450 crore as reimbursement to Himachal Pradesh for the land acquired for the Rs 5,242 crore Renuka Dam.

Appearing before a 3-member Bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, however, sought four-week time for the purpose. Granting time, the Bench asked the Centre to work out the amount involved in getting the second stage forest clearance for the project and posted the matter for further hearing after six weeks.

At the last hearing on August 5, the Bench had directed the Centre to pay the land acquisition cost within a week.

Arguing for the state government, senior advocate JS Attri and Additional Advocate General Surayanarayana Singh said some of the work relating to the second stage clearance was already over and as such the amount required for the purpose was less than Rs 1,090 crore as stated earlier. The Bench had asked the Centre to waive this amount.

The Bench had noted that the Centre was supposed to pay 90 per cent of the construction cost as it had declared the proposed dam as a national project.

The dam is primarily meant for providing drinking to Delhi, but the pipeline could also be utilised for areas of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh falling in the National Capital Region (NCR) such as Faridabad and Noida. The project will come up across the Giri river, a tributary of the Yamuna, in Sirmaur district. HP also has a stake in the project as it will get 40 mw of electricity from the project free of cost.

HP has come to the SC as it is not in a position to pay further compensation to comply with an order passed by the state high court on November 20, 2014.