Late on Friday evening, union ministers Sushil Kumar Shinde and Jairam Ramesh met in the office of the former and cancelled the Rs 3000 crore Loharibag Pala Hydroelectric power project which had been cleared by the group of Ministers headed by Pranab Mukherjee. 600 crore had already been spent on the project.
Highly placed sources in the government state that the power project which was being backed by big corporate houses and business lobbies was cancelled after the intervention of 10 Janpath since a large number of sadhus, sants, mahatmas and religious leaders were opposing the power plant as it was to come up at the mouth of the Gangotri in Uttarakhand.
It is learnt that the Congress leadership was given to understand that the Bharatiiya Janata Party would mobilise public opinion on the issue and since the Congress is trying to woo the Brahmins and other communities in Uttar Pradesh, it was felt that the agitation would spread from Uttarakhand to UP and damage the party's prospects amongst the upper castes in UP.
Amongst the forefront of the agitation was the yoga guru Baba Ramdev who has become a powerful voice having a huge following as a yoga teacher. Apart from that another priest was on an indefinite fast for the last 14 days, with the religious leaders protesting that the power project would damage the area and pollute the Ganga.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leaders were also part of the agitation and had approached the government to scrap the project, sources said. The Congress did not want to give the Hindu organisations an issue with which to take them on and did not want to turn this into an emotive issue.
