Guwahati, Sept. 10: An NGO has moved the Supreme Court seeking appropriate directions to the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) to maintain a minimum flow of water from the Lower Subansiri hydel project dam round the year to ensure a balanced ecosystem downstream. The apex court today admitted the writ petition, filed by the NGO, Assam Public Works, raising ecological concerns about the Arunachal-based hydroelectric project. “We filed the petition under Article 32 of the Constitution,” the NGO’s secretary, Bitu Talukdar, said. The NGO petitioned the court seeking directions to the NHPC to release the “minimum flow” of 450 cumecs from the dam throughout the year for maintaining ecological balance in the river, particularly during the four-five lean winter months. It also sought the apex court’s intervention to ensure that the dam was not commissioned without completion of the protection measures downstream, up to the Brahmaputra. This would involve construction of embankments to prevent deposition of sand in agricultural fields during the “sand flushing operation” of the dam in the high flood season. The petition also urged the court to ensure that the NHPC released water in a controlled way to allow rejuvenation of the land and the waterbodies downstream. The petition said, “There has been no equity, sincerity and concern in the government’s approach regarding all aspects of a hydel project — safety of the dam, ecological concerns upstream and downstream, impact on riparian people and a sincere effort to maximise other benefits from the dam — resulting in work on the dam being stalled since December 2011 owing to intense public protests.” The petition said non-release of water from the dam for 20 hours a day would annihilate the Gangetic dolphins (Platinesta Gangetica), India’s national aquatic animal, in Subansiri’s downstream. It added that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during his visit to Assam, had also opined that the solution to the Subansiri impasse was only possible by taking a “holistic” approach towards the matter. “No one has a right to kill a river. God, in his infinite mercy, has given us Nature’s bounties for our use. We can build properly designed safe dams on it — generate power, irrigate fields, and use it for the good of mankind. But no one has the right to kill this river, or any river, as is being planned by NHPC and the government of India in case of Subansiri,” the petition said.