No new construction at Gairsain without environmental clearance; speaker

DAINIK NATION BUREAU

Despite the National Green Tribunal slams Uttarakhand for carrying out construction of a new Assembly building at Bhararisain, Chamoli without seeking the mandatory clearances, the Assembly session will begin on December 7 at Bhararisain, Speaker Premchand Aggarwal has said while talking to media here in vidhan sabha today.

On Thursday, the country’s Green Court had opposed that the construction activity was initiated at Gairsain without obtaining environment clearances. “There is no move to postpone or plan to hold the Assembly session elsewhere. It would be held at Gairsain as our officers are already engaged in the preparations for holding the session,” said Aggarwal, who returned to office today after attending international parliamentary affairs committee meeting at Bangladesh and then visited to japan, hongkong and Singapore.

The court has raised some objections about fulfilling certain provisions, which are already being looked into. He took over in March this year so no new construction activity has taken place at Gairsain. Now, whatever new construction activity would happen, it would be executed after seeking prior environmental clearance.

Ironically, Aggarwal also outrightly rejected the Leader of the Opposition Indira Hriyadesh’s claims that the opposition was not taken into confidence while calling off the last budget session. As a result, the opposition had announced that it would not attend the Business Advisory Committees meeting for discussing the agenda for the upcoming Assembly session at Gairsain. “Whatever, we did was within the rules, there was no need for coming up with a new business agenda and seek prior approval, as the house was adjourned the same day. If session would have ended after 12 pm then they might have raised objection but we concluded before 12 pm so no question arises about violation of BAC,”Aggarwal added.

He also reiterated that no attempts were made to suppress the voice of the opposition. The House functions with the collective support of the both treasury and opposition bench. Both have equal responsibility to run the house smoothly.

Sharing his experience about 63^rd ICPA, Aggarwal said that he got a chance to address the parliament. Although he addressed in hindi. He expressed surprised that there was no translator there. he does not know whether people understood it or not.