Within a month of approving the 600 MW Loharinag Pala dam on the Bhagirathi River, a major source of the Ganges in Uttarakhand, the government has decided to scrap the project.  The volte face came after the intervention of the Congress top brass, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Citing ecological impact, the government's concern for religious sentiments attached to the river, and the demand for unbroken flow (aviral jaldhara), union power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and minister of state for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh together announced that the controversial project would be wound up. 

The decision to shut down the hydroelectric project was taken by the same three-member group of ministers - Shinde, Ramesh and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee - who recommended in June that the dam could not be scrapped due to the financial implications involved, as Rs650 crore have already been spent on it and shutting it down would be too expensive. 

But with the Congress high command intervening in the matter, the three met again on Friday morning and reversed the decision.

In a press release issued late in the evening, the two ministers said that though the GoM had recommended continuation of work, the prime minister held consultations with a wide range of people and asked the GoM to review the project from the environmental, financial and social points of view. 

A scientific committee earlier had already pointed out that it was technical possible to shut down the project mid-way though it would require some more expenses to be ploughed to make the unfinished construction safe in the seismically active area. 

While Ramesh was against the project from the start, Shinde had pointed out that besides the Rs650 crore already invested in the project, another Rs2,000 crore were locked because of the supplies and orders in the pipeline.

The government had earlier rejected the proposal for two other dams - the 381 MW Bhaironghati project and 480 MW Pala Maneri project on the Bhaigrathi. 

It has also been decided to declare the 135-km stretch between Goumukh (the source of the river near the holy shrine of Gangotri) and Uttarkashi as an eco-sensitive zone under the Environmental Protection Act. Once the change is made in the next few weeks, no development projects will be allowed in the zone.

Goumukh itself was closed to tourists earlier this year on environmental grounds.

The decision would mean that the Ganges would flow freely on a 135-km stretch from Gaumukh to Uttarkashi in Uttarakhand. ''It will be a no-dam area and the government will declare it an ecologically sensitive zone in the next four to five weeks,'' Ramesh said. This stretch of the Ganga will become India's first river zone to be declared a no-dam area.

The GoM has also recommended that the Union government shall bear the cost of maintaining safeguard measures that are required as well as compensate National Thermal Power Corp for project-related expenditures and commitments. 

A large number of religious organisations and former IIT professor G D Aggarwal, had earlier asked the prime minister to review the decision to go ahead with the project. Aggarwal was on his third fast unto death against the decision in Dehradun.