Industry & Economy
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Infrastructure
Minister's clarification on Sabarimala project
Our Bureau
Thiruvananthapuram
,
Nov. 7
AMIDST the growing controversy over the Sabarimala development plan, the Minister for Tourism and Devaswom, Mr K.C. Venugopal, has clarified that IL&FS had been authorised only to prepare the master plan for the development project.
He said at a news conference here on Monday that this had been done only in order to ensure that the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest gave clearance for release of forestland for creating the necessary facilities for the pilgrims at the hill shrine.
Reacting to claims made by the SNDP General Secretary that he had documents in his possession to prove corruption in the project being implemented at Sabarimala, the Minister asked him to make the documents public.
Mr Venugopal said that the whole confusion about the project arose following a press report quoting the Joint Managing Director of IL&FS as saying that the project costing Rs 1,000 crore was proposed to be implemented with funds raised from the open market.
After the report was published, the Principal Secretary (Devaswom) had written to the official concerned the very next day asking him to retract his statement.
The Principal Secretary had also pointed out in the letter that the Government had no proposal to raise funds from the open market.
The IL&FS official retracted his statement immediately and reports to this effect were published in the media.
This being the case, there was no ground for any controversy over the issue, the Minister said.
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