BHUBANESWAR: The Orissa Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) on Friday demanded that the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between the National Hydro Power Corporation (NHPC) and the Orissa Hydro Power Corporation (OHPC) for setting up the Sindol project should be shelved and the State Government should announce there will be no such project. It is high time the State Government said good bye to the controversial project, OPCC president Niranjan Patnaik and former MP Sriballav Panigrahi said at a media conference here. The real intention of the BJD government seems that the project is aimed at providing water to the proposed power projects and other industries in the area, they said. The OPCC president had constituted a committee headed by Panigrahi to visit the site of the proposed project and submit a report. The other members were party spokesman Narendra Kumar Mishra and chairman of the Khet Mazdoor Congress Amiya Kumar Patnaik. The committee which submitted its report the OPCC president on Friday questioned the signing of MoU before taking public opinion. Even the people’s representatives of the area were not consulted, it added. In 2003, during by-election to the Rairakhole Assembly constituency, the then energy minister Surya Narayan Patro had given in writing to the BJD candidate Sanatan Bisi that the project would be shelved. The BJD had also opposed the project when it was proposed at Godhaneswar in Sonepur district in the 1990s by then Congress government. The committee alleged that at present the river bed in Mahanadi is getting silted because of soil erosion at the upper ridges. The proposed barrage would also get silted like Hirakud dam creating more submergence in the affected area, it said. As per the Sindol project report of the 1990s, 43461 persons of 798 families in 60 villages would be affected. Further, 215 hectares of human habitation, 732 hectares of anabadi land and 1180 hectares of agricultural land of 4042 persons would be submerged.
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