Mumbai: In a fire-fighting exercise, the government said on Thursday it would withdraw parts of an affidavit filed on its behalf in the Supreme Court that said there was no historical evidence of Ram having existed or built the Ram Sethu, a coral bridge that links India to Sri Lanka.
Law minister H.R. Bharadwaj said the government would withdraw the offending parts of the affidavit and file a supplementary one before the court on Friday. People close to the development said that Congress president and United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi had personally directed the government to do this, though Mint couldn’t independently confirm this. On Friday, the court will consider whether it should revise its own order asking the government not to do any work on the bridge.
The bridge has been at the heart of a controversy ever since the government decided to destroy it as part of a project to create a channel between the Bay of Bengal and the Gulf of Mannar, cutting a day’s passage for ships circumnavigating India. The project has been opposed by politicians, scientists, environmentalists and religious groups.
On Wednesday, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a Hindu organization, organized protests in various parts of the country against the project to build the channel. The previously scheduled campaign became more strident after the government’s filing to the apex court with the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, sensing a political opportunity.
“It is likely that this issue will transform the Bharatiya Janata Party’s political fortunes,” predicts Mahesh Rangarajan, an independent political analyst.
Since Tuesday, Mint has been running a special four-part series—of which this is the last—on the so-called Adam’s Bridge (or Sethusamudram) project, a Rs2,600 crore effort by the government (see box above). The stories have examined the claimed economic benefits of the project and progress, or the lack thereof, on it.
The bridge at the heart of the controversy cannot be seen at all on most days. It is only when the tide is right that this coral formation that links India and Sri Lanka can be seen.
Travellers walked to Sri Lanka on this 30km long and 3km wide bridge until 1480. Then, a cyclone came and the waters consumed the bridge. Its existence passed out of common knowledge and became legend.
Hindu protestors—who believe that Ram built this bridge with the help of an army of monkeys, attacked the demon king Ravana in Lanka and rescued his wife, Sita—say that the project, which plans to cut through the Ram Sethu to create a channel linking the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, is a “deliberate design to destroy the most ancient relic of Hindu history.”
On 31 August, when the apex court was informed about an alleged government plan to blast the bridge, it issued a stay on all work on the Rs2,600 crore Sethusamudram project for two weeks. A two-judge bench will hear the arguments on Friday and decide if the stay should continue or be lifted.