Behind hydel challenge washed away, a troubled path to accident in 2011

ON INDEPENDENCE Day in 2011, Rakesh Mehra, the proprietor of Ludhiana-based Rajit Paints Group, drove as much as Chamoli in Uttarakhand to inaugurate the trial run of a unit of his mini-hydel challenge on Rishi Ganga river adjoining to the Nandadevi biosphere reserve. At the challenge web site, a boulder slid overhead and fell on him.
“Imagine the odds of a single, dislodged boulder killing him while nobody standing around received a scratch. In hindsight, was it just a freak incident or an early warning? Today, so many are feared dead and everything has been washed away,” says Kolkata-based realtor Kamal Surana who had offered the ability challenge to Mehra in 2006.
Between the 2011 boulder slide that killed Mehra and the 2021 glacier burst that buried your complete challenge together with a number of employees, the Rishi Ganga mini-hydel plant suffered extreme injury within the floods of June 2013 and a cloud burst on the web site in August 2016.

In 2019, the area people sought judicial treatment to cease “rampant blasting, reckless dumping of muck next to the riverbed, and tree felling” that allegedly continued until mid-2020, destabilising the slopes and blocking the river channel.
The flash flood Sunday was the newest scar within the challenge’s again story that started in 1996 when Rishi Ganga Power Corporation Ltd was arrange by Surana in Kolkata. The challenge — it was cleared in 2000 — has modified fingers twice since then. “I purchased the land and got all clearances from the Mayawati government in UP and the Centre. It was before the state of Uttarakhand came to be,” remembers Surana.
Surana had no historical past or expertise of growing energy vegetation, and the challenge web site was precariously near one among India’s most pristine high-altitude landscapes and a UNESCO world heritage web site. And but, because it was a mini-hydel challenge, it was exempt from environmental influence evaluation.
But the challenge didn’t take off for years. “I had the loan sanctioned for the project. But setbacks happen in businesses, and in life. So I passed it on to the Mehras of Ludhiana,” says Surana. He wouldn’t specify how Mehra got here into the image, besides to say that it occurred in a “world much smaller than we think”.
Like Surana, Mehra of Rajit Paints had no background in energy plant growth. But he secured loans totalling Rs 39 crore from Punjab National Bank by 2008 and launched into the challenge.
“Initially, it was meant to be a 8.25 MW project but Mehra enhanced the capacity to 13.2 MW for 21 years. The plant was almost ready when Mehra died at the site in 2011. Then the company apparently ran into trouble,” says Jitendra Singh, who surveyed the plant for licensed emission discount credit below the clear growth mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in 2010.

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Mehra’s demise reportedly triggered a dispute in his prolonged household over the management of his companies. By 2013, the dues to PNB had swelled to Rs 66 crore. The financial institution categorized it as NPA in February 2016. Months later, a extreme cloud burst hit the plant, additional lowering probabilities of restoration. The matter moved to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), and Delhi-based Kundan Group took over the challenge in December 2018.
As work resumed, residents of Raini village, the closest settlement and web site of the Chipko motion within the Nineteen Seventies, complained of reckless development practices. Hearing a PIL, the Uttarakhand High Court issued notices to the Central and state governments in May 2019.
“We also went to the National Green Tribunal but did not get any relief. They formed committees with the same local officials who were indifferent to our plight. When these committees came for inspection, they did not even call us. The company continued with regular blasting till mid-2020,” says Sangram Singh Rawat, a former sarpanch of Raini.
The firm, nevertheless, denies the fees. “There are vested interests behind the litigation. We were not involved in blasting, muck dumping, etc., as we only did major repairs of damage caused by floods, besides certain modifications, upgradation and innovations,” says a Kundan Group spokesperson.
According to the spokesperson, the challenge has now suffered damages value Rs 125-150 crore and the corporate will present training to the kids of the lifeless or lacking plant employees.
There isn’t any phrase on rebuilding but. “The entire plant is destroyed. The rebuilding of the plant shall be ascertained based out of various factors,” says the spokesperson.
Rawat, the previous sarpanch, needs firms and buyers, if not the federal government, to “learn their lessons” a minimum of now. “How many more landslides, floods and deaths will it take? How much more destruction?” he says.

Says Surana: “Policies are decided by governments. But certainly there are heavy risks in putting money and projects in such fragile, unpredictable areas.”
Does he really feel relieved that circumstances made him pull out? “As they say, whatever the almighty does, is for good. But I had plans to settle there after retiring from business. Such a beautiful place. I remember those villagers. Those lovely people trusted me. It’s so tragic what all has happened.”