The future of two hydel power plants is stalled in the wake of a stand off between two different NGOs contesting over its religious and developmental implications in the state. Supreme Court verdict on a PIL will decide the victor in the battle over power generation versus religious sentiments till then the future of power generation and its people in still nascent Uttarakhand, hangs in suspension. The last is yet to be heard on the controversial closure of two hydel projects, in Uttarakhand, due to the fast observed by former IIT professor and noted environmentalist G D Aggarwal, last month. As had been reported in these columns, the much hyped fast which later found support from various outfits of the Sangh Pariwar, Govindacharya, Swami Ramdev and a number of sadhus looking for their share of glory. The Uttarakhand government was made to retract and close down the Pala Maneri (480 MW) and the Bhaironghati (400 MW) projects with immediate effect on June 19. What was probably not reported as widely in Delhi and other places was that this led to violent protests by local villagers against the closure, which would harm the state's economy; affect employment and power supply. To protect him from the villagers fury, Aggarwal was rushed out of Uttarakhand and brought to Delhi where he continued to fast. Even though the government had declared their closure, the Indian Council for Environmental and Legal Action (ICELA), an NGO headed by noted lawyer M C Mehta filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Nainital high court, on June 23 pleading for the projects' closure on religious and environmental grounds. It has asked the government to turn the entire stretch between Gangotri and Dharasu into a national heritage and facilitate an uninterrupted flow of the Ganges. Now another NGO in Dehradun, the Rural Litigation Entitlement Kendra (RLEK) that has raised several environmental and social issues has also filed a petition in the high court urging the government to restart the two projects. After hearing the petition of RLEK, a bench of Chief Justice V K Gupta and Justice B C Kandpal has issued notice to the Uttarakhand Jal Vidyut Nigam, State Industrial Development Corporation, Uttarakhand Environment Protection and Pollution Control Board, National Thermal Power Corporation, Union Ministry for Water Resources and the ICELA to reply by July 30. The two petitions of RLEK and ICELA have now been clubbed together for hearing on, July 30. Not surprisingly the petition of RLEK falls most harshly on the ICELA, terming its petition not a PIL, but 'political interest litigation1. Talking to Sahara Time, Avadhash Kaushal, chairperson of RLEK says: "The PIL filed by ICELA is nothing but an excuse to put a legal sanctity to their illegal order. But their PIL has concealed facts from the high court that the hydel projects they were seeking to get closed had already been closed." He said that it was funny that the ICELA petition had cited religious and sentimental reasons, to sustain the purity of the Ganges. "Why only Ganga? Is Yamuna any less important? Or are they saying that Ram is a bigger God than Krishna. In many places like Mathura they worship the Yamuna but that has not prevented the government from making projects like the Lakhvad Vyasi. As for the sentiments; they cannot be more vital than survival and earning a livelihood," he states. Quoting from various Supreme Court judgments on the issue of big dams the petition states that religion and sentiment cannot be a ground for depriving people of electricity, which is vital for the survival of any country. The motivation behind filing the petition was: "I was shocked to find that the government had already invested about rupees 80 crore and rupees 25 crore on two of these projects. Any delay, even of a year would mean the cost of production would escalate to the tune of rupees 239 crore. A state like Uttarakhand, which is already lagging behind the national aver