Thiruvananthapuram: As the LDF government is busy trying to manage the outburst of public anger against the satellite survey of ecologically sensitive zones, Opposition Leader V D Satheesan on Tuesday hurled a set of six posers at Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. "The Chief Minister has to respond to our questions," Satheesan said at a press conference.
One, if as the Chief Minister now claims excluding human habitations from the ESZs was government policy, why did the government, on the basis of a cabinet decision, issue a notification on October 31, 2019, recommending an ESZ of one kilometre including human habitations and submit such a proposal to the Centre and the Supreme Court?
Two, why was a second notification riddled with confusion issued without cancelling the first one? "For whose benefit," Satheesan asked. "After the Supreme Court verdict of June 3 this year, when the opposition raised the issue in the Assembly, the government had given an assurance that the controversial 2019 notification would be withdrawn and a new one issued in its place," the opposition leader said.
Three, why did the government depend solely on satellite survey and entrust the entire job of identifying markers of human existence to the Forest Department alone?
Satheesan said that the Supreme Court had only said that satellite survey could be used if required. The June 3 order also said that the assistance of other government agencies also should be sought. "Why were other government departments that had a stake in the survey, like Revenue and local self-government, not made a part of the exercise," he said.
Four, why was a manual survey not done? Satheesan said if local-level monitoring committees were formed with panchayat-level people's representatives and officials, the identification of subsistence structures along the proposed ESZs could have been completed in under three months.
Five, why was the satellite report, made available to the government by August 30, kept under wraps for three months even after it was known that the report was incomplete and vague and also that it would go against the interests of Kerala?
Six, would the Chief Minister accept full responsibility if the Supreme Court, on the basis of this incomplete satellite report, throws up a verdict that would hurt Kerala's interests.
Satheesan said it was the indifference of the LDF government that had precipitated such a crisis. To buttress his argument, the opposition leader drew attention to the plight of the Expert Committee formed to study the anomalies in the satellite report.
"The Committee was formed on September 30 but it was only on December 16 that the government issued an order fixing the remuneration and other benefits of the chairman (Justice Thottathil B Radhakrishnan)," he said.
This committee was supposed to submit its preliminary report in one month and the final report in three months. "Was even the preliminary report submitted? Did the government check why the report was not filed? Did they at least enquire about the steps the Committee had taken? This only reinforces our charge that this is a sleeping government," Satheesan said.