Visit to Tipaimukh Site
Journalists return with only bird's eye view
Ten Bangladeshi journalists, who went to visit the Tipaimukh dam site on the Barak river in India's northeastern Manipur state on June 6, only got a bird's eye view as the helicopter carrying them could not land.
“The Indian Air Force (IAF) said that the helipad at Tipaimukh is not fit for landing of the chopper. Therefore, the team could not visit the site,” said Ranjan Mandal, media liaison officer of the central ministry of external affairs to Times of India on June 7.
In July 2009, a Bangladeshi parliamentary delegation led by Abdur Razzak, on a fact-finding mission arranged by the Dhaka and Delhi governments, met a similar fate when heavy rains barred their landing.
The Times of India ran a report headlined “Bangladeshi scribes' dam mission fails to take off” in its Guwahati issue on June 8.
The report said the Indian government flew the journalists' to the site on an IAF helicopter from Silchar airport at Kumbhirgram, Assam on June 6.
But the copter could not land at Tipaimukh due to “technical reasons”, said the report.
The next morning, the journalists once again expressed their keenness to visit Tipaimukh, situated at a distance of 78 kilometres from Silchar hotel and 100 kilometres from Manipur's capital Imphal.
But the IAF authorities failed to take them to the spot for the same reasons as the previous day, read the report.
However, the journalists had an opportunity to look at the congruence point of the Barak and Tuivai rivers and the Tipaimukh dam site from 1,200 feet above the ground for over 20 minutes during the 70-minute chopper ride, it said.
Sources told the Times of India that the journalists understood that India was yet to make any construction at the proposed site, added the report.
The journalists, led by Bangladesh Foreign Affairs Publicity Wing Deputy Director Md Zashimuddin, had reached Silchar hotel on June 6 and left via Kolkata on the afternoon of June 7. They arrived in Dhaka on June 8.
Earlier, they had met Union Water Resources Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal and Water Resources Secretary Dhruv Vijay Singh in New Delhi and were briefed about the project.
Meanwhile, Committee of People and Environment, a body of environment activists and some anti-dam organisations based in South Assam, staged a demonstration in front of Silchar hotel on the morning of June 7.
Earlier, four local non-government organisations, in a joint statement in Imphal on June 7, observed that it was not possible for the journalists to assess the environment and social impacts of such a huge project from aerial survey.
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