Senior ex-bureaucrats ask SC to put n-power plans on hold

Alarmed by the Manmohan Singh government's penchant for nuclear power even when most developed countries are abandoning it, a group of 13 former high-ranking government officials together with two non-government organisations have filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 and also seeking a safety reassessment of all nuclear facilities in India and a comprehensive long-term cost-benefit analysis of the upcoming nuclear plants in the country.

The petitioners include former union cabinet secretary T S R Subramanian, former power secretary E A S Sarma, former chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami, former secretary to the prime minister K R Venugopal, former chief of naval staff Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas and former member of the National Knowledge Commission P M Bhargava.

The reportedly well-researched PIL, filed by NGOs Common Cause and Centre for Public Interest Litigation, seeks a stay on all proposed nuclear plants till the safety and cost-benefit analysis is carried out and ''meaningful'' public hearings held by or under the supervision of an independent expert body.

The petition urges the Supreme Court to stay all the contracts that the union government and its agencies have signed for setting up the ''hazardous'' plants without such assessment.

They have sought a direction to declare the Nuclear Liability Act as ''unconstitutional''. In case of a nuclear accident, all nuclear operators and nuclear suppliers must be jointly, severally and absolutely liable for civil damages, and their financial liability should be unlimited, it said.

According to counsel for the petitioners, Prashant Bhushan and Pranav Sachdev, the biggest of the proposed nuclear plant is at Jaitapur in Maharashtra, where six reactors of 1,650 mw each are to be imported from Areva Corp of France, a company that's been penalised under the French law.