Plea to put off public hearing on distilleries during pandemic

Visakhapatnam SOCIAL activist and former IAS officer EAS Sarma has appealed to the State Government to put off public hearing for Pearl Distilleries Pvt Ltd at Singarayakonda in Prakasam district on May 26. In a letter to Dr KS Jawahar Reddy, Special Chief Secretary, Health & Family Welfare, he referred to the notification issued by APPCB for holding a public hearing even as Prakasam district recorded over 750 new Covid positive cases on Monday with three deaths. The State has imposed curfew across all the districts.

At this time, to conduct a public hearing for a project which could easily amount to deliberately creating scope for spreading a deadly, infectious disease like Covid, which should attract the penal provisions of Sections 269 and 270 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). If some people lose their lives as a result of this, in my view, the senior officers of APPCB should be held directly liable for the same, Sarma pointed out.