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        It is not the facts which guide the conduct of our Cabinet Ministers in New Delhi, but their preconceived opinions about facts, which may be entirely wrong. We as helpless citizens can only endeavor to make them right by bringing them up for open public debate and discussion. If there is a Union Cabinet Minister who blatantly avoids solid facts like fire or runs away from facts or hides vital facts from public view regardless of costs and consequences to the Nation and its Exchequer, it is the Union Shipping and Transport Minister, T R Baalu. His official contempt for our Prime Minister, running counter to and cutting at the root of the very basis of Cabinet System of Government, is now not only a matter of common knowledge but common public joke, throughout the country. In so far as the SSCP is concerned, T R Baalu believes in manufacturing his own ''Periyar-Keemayana'' fiction everyday which runs counter to all the known scientific facts assiduously collected and documented by several scientific and technical Bodies/ Departments of the Government of India.

        It is a national tragedy that under the UPA Government's unwritten working commandment, the good Ministers have no command and the wicked and corrupt ones have full and unrestrained command. That is the only unfortunate though reasonable inference that the mute millions of India can draw about the shoddy way in which the SSCP has been drawn up and is being implemented with undue haste in gross violation of the Due Process of Law and Procedure enjoined upon the Government of India under various mandatory provisions of the Constitution.

        Edmund Burke (1729-1797), one of the greatest political philosophers of all time rightly said: ''Facts are to the mind what food is to the body. On the due digestion of the former depend the strength and wisdom of the one, just as vigor and health depend on the other. The wisest in Council, the ablest in debate in the House of Commons and the most successful public leader in a nation's polity, is the man who has assimilated to his full understanding the greatest number of relevant and accurate facts''.

        But to Union Shipping and Transport Minister T R Baalu such facts are his sworn enemies to be avoided or at any rate killed at any cost like house flies using the seals of his transitory public office. Moreover he has an unconcealed contempt for scientific facts and men of science. He refuses to see or acknowledge that scientific facts, combined with practical ideas, constitute the greatest force in the world. T R Baalu has failed to understand that facts not frankly faced have a habit of stabbing us in the back. As Winston Churchill declared: ''Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get'em, get'em right, or they will get you wrong''. T R Baalu has landed himself in such an unenviable and difficult situation today. All mature Ministers in all civilized countries set this working motto before themselves: ''Let us keep our mouths shut and pens dry until we know the facts''. T R Baalu has no faith in such a pragmatic philosophy. Further a responsible Cabinet Minister should understand that facts mean nothing unless they are rightly understood, rightly related and rightly interpreted. Such an attitude is wholly anathema to T R Baalu. For him facts mean nothing. They must be cleverly avoided or wrongly understood, wrongly related and mischievously interpreted. This has been his policy at every stage during the implementation of the Setusamudram Shipping Canal Project (SSCP) ever since its inception in 2004.

        Taking full note of the above murky general background, Dandi Swami Sri Vidyananda Bharati filed a Writ Petition (No. 272 of 2007) in the Supreme Court of India, fully fortified and documented with scientific facts and figures, invoking the Original Jurisdiction of Article 32 of the Constitution of India as a Public Interest litigation on behalf of the citizens of India, in particular of the States of Tamilnadu and Kerala, seeking protection of the fundamental rights contained in Articles 14, 19, 21 and 25 of the Constitution of India and praying for orders against the implementation of the Setusamudram Shipping Canal Project (The ''Project'').

        The Supreme Court in its order dated 29 May 2007 advised the petitioner to approach the appropriate authorities in the Government of India and the concerned State Government for specific relief from the relevant Departments in regard to the specific scientific/ administrative issues raised before the Supreme Court of India. Accordingly Dandi Swami Sri Vidyananda Bharati has filed the DEMAND NOTICE PETITION with the President of India, Prime Minister's office, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Shipping, Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences in the Government of India in New Delhi and also the State of Tamilnadu through its Chief Secretary and the Department of Environment and Forests, Government of Tamilnadu. In his Demand Petition, he has demanded that these public authorities should give him a reply on the points raised by him within three weeks as indicated by the Supreme Court of India.

        I would like to summarize the vital and cardinal scientific issues and points raised by Dandi Swami Sri Vidyananda Bharati in his DEMAND NOTICE PETITIONS referred to above in the larger public interest of the pursuit of truth, information and enlightenment. The pseudo-secular mafia of print and electronic mass media, daily revelling only in dishing out drivel, duplicity and demeaning programmes on account of their known anti-Hindu pseudo-secular fervour and unrequited infatuation for Sonia led UPA Government, would go to the end of the world to choke all the avenues of public information or sources of truth relating to the vital public issues affecting the larger national interest raised in the Demand Notice Petition presented by Dandi Swami Sri Vidyananda Bharati.

        In his Demand Notice Petition, immediate redressal has been sought from various public authorities both in the government of India and the Government of Tamilnadu in regard to the following issues / points:

        A) The ''Project'' has been conceptualized without taking into account the likelihood of a Tsunami or its disastrous effects in a slip-shod manner that is arbitrary and unreasonable, violating the fundamental right to equality under Article 14 and the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution. Neither the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report by NEERI completed in May / August 2004 nor the DPR by L&T / Ramboll for the “Project” completed in February 2005 have taken into account the likelihood or effects of a Tsunami, despite the massive destruction caused by the Tsunami which hit the coast line of South India on 26 December, 2004. Prof. Tad S Murthy, a world renowned Tsunami Expert and a former Editor of a prestigious scientific and technical Journal called 'Tsunami Effects Review' has categorically warned that the proposed alignment of the mid-ocean channel under the ''Project'' is such that it will so funnel and amplify the wave from a Tsunami from south east Asia as to cause massive destruction of life and property in areas on the coast line of Kerala and Tamilnadu. The relevant and timely warning given by Prof. Tad S Murthy has been ignored with dictatorial impunity by T R Balu and his officers.

        B) Established and well known precautionary principles that should govern any environmental clearance have not been weighed and analysed by the Ministry of Environment in the Government of India while giving environmental clearance for the ''Project'' under the Environmental (Protection) Act, 1986. The Ministry of Environment has completely ignored the following instructions laid down by the Supreme Court off India in Vellore Citizens' Welfare Forum versus Union of India (1996) 5 SCC 647 (page 658): ''Where there are threats of serious and irreversible damage, lack of scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation''. Despite the fact that there is a serious likelihood of danger to the unique habitat and the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mannar arising from dredging and dumping of material from / on the ocean floor to widen the channel to 300 metres wide and 12 metres deep under the ''Project'', the public authorities put in charge of the ''Project'' are blindly going ahead with the process of construction of the channel without considering the possible disastrous outcome of serious environmental degradation. The endangered species in the Gulf of Mannar region include the Dugong (Sea Cow), Sea Horses, five Species of Marine Turtles and Whales and Dolphins. Eminent Marine Biologists have confirmed that in this region there is also a unique link species between Vertebrates and Invertebrates called Balano-Glossus that is unique to the Mannar region. These species thrive in the endangered habitats consisting of mangrove forests and sea grasses surrounding the cluster of Islands on the Southern coast of Tamilnadu which have been declared as a National Park under the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972.

        I am sorry to have to say that I cannot too often repeat that DEMOCRACY in India is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened like a sleeping giant, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come during the last 125 years, from pen to tongue. For me, as an insignificant and unnoticed freelance journalist, Democracy is a great word, whose glorious history, I suppose, remains untold and unwritten because that history has yet to be enacted.