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b) Geological and Seismological aspects of the dam site.

The Tribunal accepted the recommendations of the Standing Committee under Central Water & Power Commission that there should be seismic co-efficient of 0.10 g for the dam.

c) RELIEF AND REHABILITAION:

The final Award contained directions regarding submergence, land acquisition and rehabilitation of displaced persons. The award defined the meaning of the land, oustee and family. The Gujarat Government was to pay to Madhya Pradesh and Maharasthra all costs including compensation, charges, expenses incurred by them for and in respect of compulsory acquisition of land. Further, the Tribunal had provided for rehabilitation of oustees and civic amenities to be provided to the oustees. The award also provided that if the State of Gujarat was unable to re-settle the oustees or the oustees being unwilling to occupy the area offered by the States, then the oustees will be re-settled by home State and all expenses for this were to be borne by Gujarat. An important mandatory provision regarding rehabilitation was the one contained in Clause XI sub- clause IV(6)(ii) which stated that no submergence of any area would take place unless the oustees were rehabilitated.

It is also contended that before embarking on the Sardar Sarovar Project it was necessary that the Master Plan for rehabilitation of the families to be affected is completed. According to the petitioner the Master Plan which was submitted in the Court cannot be regarded as an acceptable Master Plan inasmuch as it has no mention of people affected by Sardar Sarovar project other than those affected by submergence and it has no estimate of resource base of the oustees in their original village. Further the plan makes no estimation of the forest land, grazing land and resources being used by the oustees. The Master Plan persists with the discriminatory and differential policies which are less than just to the oustees. There is also no planning for community resettlement even though the Award of the Narmada Tribunal made detailed provision regarding rehabilitation of the oustees which required that there should be village wise community rehabilitation.

With regard to the State of Madhya Pradesh it is submitted that as per the award the PAFs have a right to choose whether to go to Gujarat or to stay in the home State. The State of Madhya Pradesh is stated to have planned the whole re-settlement based on the assumption that overwhelming proportion of oustees entitled to land will go to Gujarat yet even for the limited number of oustees who are likely to stay in Madhya pradesh the submission is that no land is available. The petitioner also disputes the averment of the State of Madhya Pradesh that the oustees have been given a choice as to whether they would like to go to Gujarat or stay in the home State. According to the petitioner the majority of the oustees would prefer to stay in the home State that is Madhya Pradesh but sufficient land for their resettlement in Madhya Pradesh is not available. According to the petitioner the State of Madhya Pradesh has stated that it does not have land for any PAFs above 830 and even for 830 PAFs the land is not available. It is also submitted that the Madhya Pradesh Government cannot wriggle out of its responsibility to provide land for the oustees by offering them cash compensation. The petitioner finds fault with the effort of the State of Madhya Pradesh to push the oustees to Gujarat whose rehabilitation scheme is more attractive and beneficial than that of Madhya Pradesh.

Subsequent to the Tribunals Award, on the recommendation of the World Bank, the Government of Gujarat adopted the principle of re- settlement that the oustees shall be relocated as village units, village sections or families in accordance with the outstees preference. The oustees choice has actively guided the re-settlement process. The requirement in the Tribunals Award was that the Gujarat shall establish rehabilitation villages in Gujarat in the irrigation command of the Sardar Sarovar Project on the norms mentioned for rehabilitation of the families who were willing to migrate to Gujarat. This provision could not be interpreted to mean that the oustees families should be resettled as a homogeneous group in a village exclusively set up for each such group. The concept of community wise re-settlement, therefore, cannot derive support from the above quoted stipulation. Besides, the norms referred to in the stipulation relate to provisions for civic amenities. They vary as regards each civic amenity vis-à-vis the number of oustees families. Thus, one panchayat ghar, one dispensary, one childrens park, one seed store and one village pond is the norm for 500 families, one primary school (3 rooms ) for 100 families and a drinking water well with trough and one platform for every 50 families. The number of families to which the civic amenities were to be provided was thus not uniform and it was not possible to derive therefrom a standardised pattern for the establishment of a site which had nexus with the number of oustees families of a particular community or group to be resettled. These were not indicators envisaging re-settlement of the oustees families on the basis of tribes, sub-tribes, groups or sub-groups.