Tehri residents refuse to vacate despite warning

After construction of the 71-metre high Coffer dam by diverting the Ganga water into two underground tunnels, there is a perceptible danger of a rise in the water level during heavy showers which may submerge Tehri town, Tyagi told The Indian Express.

He said he was also writing to the State Government to get the town evacuated by moving the residents to safer places before the onset of monsoon. The THDC has directly conveyed the threat to local residents as well.

The Corporation has claimed to have rehabilitated over 90 per cent residents of Tehri town at New Tehri, Raiwala in Dehra Dun and Bhaniawala in Hardwar. But few have actually shifted to their new habitat.

The THDC had issued a similar warning last year also, when the Coffer dam was nearing completion, but no-one took it seriously. “This was why we had prepared a disaster management plan at a cost of Rs 2.27 lakh to move the flood-affected people to safer places like schools and panchayats. But, we are in no position to incur such expenditure every year,” he claimed.Work on the Tehri dam is 60 per cent complete and has been speeded up for the past one year. “Our target is to complete it and make it functional by the year 2000 so as to provide 2400 MW of power to the state,” Tyagi claimed.

However, anti-Tehri dam activists like Sunder Lal Bahuguna described the warning as a hollow threat aimed at scaring away local people without giving them adequate compensation.

“I am trying to persuade the people not to run away by giving them my own example. I am living at the lowest point and in case of floods, I will be the first person to be drowned. But, I am not going to vacate the place,” Bahuguna said.

Though Bahuguna has few takers in Tehri itself, yet people are not ready to vacate the bristling township. “How can I abandon my flourishing business? I will have to start afresh wherever I am displaced,” says A K Pal of Pal Medical Hall in Tehri.People like Pal are disregarding THDC’s threat. They know that the Corporation, which is already under trouble due to agitations by environmentalists, can hardly afford more adverse publicity.

“They may claim that they have not prepared a disaster management plan but I know they will not let even a single resident of Tehri town die due to floods,” he says.

Bahuguna has been spearheading a movement against the Tehri dam project, which has uprooted thousands of people from their traditional lands. The issue has powerful emotive appeal in the Tehri area.