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Project Seabird may be delayed by a few months

The commissioning of the Rs 250 billion naval project, Seabird, scheduled to take off by the year-end, will be delayed by a few months following hurdles in the rehabilitation of those dislocated by the project, Karnataka Excise Minister P S Jayavant, who is in charge of Uttara Kanara district, says.

He told newspersons in Bangalore yesterday that though the government was trying to provide the land required for the Asia's biggest naval project to the defence ministry in time, it would not be possible to commission the base as scheduled since some of the villages could be cleared only by June next.

Defence Minister George Fernandes had told reporters on Sunday that the state government had agreed to hand over the necessary area within 100 days so that the project could take off at the earliest.

He said the harvest and academic seasons had come in the way of vacating these villages. However, the government had fixed June 31 next year as the deadline.

According to an old estimate 3,600 families would have to be cleared. But after receiving representation that several settlements were left out in the earlier survey, the government had ordered a fresh survey, Jayavant said, and added that even after the proposed new survey the figure would not cross 5,000 families.

The revised estimate for rehabilitation compensation was fixed at Rs 1.01 billion, he said, and that already two meetings had been held between the officials of the state and Union governments.

UNI

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