"Fears of ‘devastation’ from largest dam on Yamuna River in India", 24 January 2022

The Vyasi Hydroelectric Project will soon start to generate electricity in Uttarakhand in northern India. This 120-megawatt station is part of the 420 MW Lakhwar-Vyasi project, the biggest hydroelectric dam complex on the Yamuna River. Work on the next phase, the 300 MW Lakhwar project 5 kilometres upstream of the Vyasi dam, is due to begin this year.

Conceptualised nearly half a century ago, the project ground to a halt in 1992. It was controversially revived in 2014 based on old clearances. There has been no environmental impact assessment, local consultation, or disaster risk study...

From February, both Vyasi’s turbines will be ready to generate electricity. Only a little work on transmission lines is left, which is due to be completed by the end of January. “We are just waiting for the people of Lohari village to leave,” said an official, speaking on condition of anonymity...

The Vyasi project will affect 334 families and six villages. One of them is Lohari, home to indigenous communities of Uttarakhand’s Jaunsar-Bawar region. This entire village of 72 families will be swallowed by the lake, yet its residents are refusing to leave as they are unwilling to accept the compensation being offered for their land...

Gullo Devi...says: “The lake has reached our village. The government says, ‘Take the money and give us your land.’ Our demand is that we need land in lieu of the land we are giving up, not money.” Another villager, Chanda Chauhan, adds: “We are giving the property of our ancestors to the government. Our fields... Where will we farm?”

...In 1972, a land acquisition agreement was signed between the government and the villagers for the dam complex...The agreement specifies that in future, land is to be given in compensation for land acquired under the project...But in a cabinet meeting in July 2021, the Uttarakhand government backed away from this. There was speculation that this was because any such allocation would lead to a flood of demands from other villages, which the government would not be able to fulfil.

With no comprehensive impact assessment, and no scientific studies on the impact of the dam, the only knowledge of how it is affecting the fragile geography of the region is a series of disasters...

Despite the disasters, the protests and environmental concerns, as he visited the region to gather public support for the assembly elections on 14 February, on 4 December 2021 Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Vyasi project...