In a development that could bring cheer to a section of India’s geophysical scientific community, the Government is said to have decided to lift a “ban” on well-known American seismologist Roger Bilham from visiting India.

Bilham has contributed immensely to our understanding of earthquakes in the Himalayas... I have been told over the phone that the ban placed on Bilham has been removed,”said Ramesh Singh, a visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, who was instrumental in organising a recent international conference on the impact of climate change and extreme events on the Himalayas.

The Bilham development was further confirmed by an official Home Ministry source, who said that “he would be granted a visa if applied next time.”

“I am on a ‘list’ of people not permitted to visit India,” Bilham told BusinessLine in an email.

A senior research scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Bilham has not been allowed to enter India for the last seven years. He had to return from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi in May 2012, en route Bhutan for his Himalayan seismological studies.

‘Hurting’ Indian science

The United Progressive Alliance government had said that his activities were not commensurate with the visa granted to him. “They haven’t reasoned it, but it is generally assumed (by embarrassed Indian colleagues) that it is because of an article I co-authored on the inadequate seismic hazard study undertaken by the Indian government for the Jaitapur Nuclear Power plant on the coast south of Goa,” Bilham said.

He, along with earthquake scientist Vinod K Gaur, wrote a paper on the past and future seismicity near Jaitapur, where a 9,900-MW nuclear power complex is to be built by state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation with the help of French company Areva.

“The official restriction on Bilham’s entry by an ill-advised Home Ministry continues to hurt Indian science,” Gaur, who is an Emeritus professor at CSIR Fourth Paradigm Institute in Bengaluru, told BusinessLine .

“Bilham has contributed the entire basic conceptual elements to our current understanding of the way Himalayan earthquakes are generated, with Indian scientists contributing little more than confirming his findings,” Gaur added.

Bilham was first to try to quantify the deformation caused by the movement of tectonic plates in the Himalayas. He introduced the use of GPS for seismic studies 25 years ago when he worked with Guar and other Indian scientists.

In 1991, he measured 21 sites (using GPS data) across Nepal, and discovered that southern Tibet is advancing steadily over India at 18 millimetre per year. This figure has remained unchallenged for the past two decades, though there have been several studies since.

“His contribution to Himalayan seismology research is immense. There was very little robust data before he came on the scene,” said another Indian seismologist.

comment COMMENT NOW