New Delhi: India is set to defy international opinion and set up a base in a planned Antarctic protected area to research the prehistoric origins of a Hindu holy river, a news report said on Sunday.
The new base would be built at the Larsemann Hills, in the middle of the proposed Antarctica Specially Managed Area or ASMA, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported.
The area has been planned since 2000 by several nations who have research facilities in the icy southern continent.
India is not among those nations, and is unlikely to accept a proposal to share an existing Australian base outside the area, officials said.
"The geology at the proposed site suits us because it is specific to Indian research interests," PS Goel, a senior official at India's Ocean Development Department said.
"The Godavari (River) would have flowed there about 130 million years ago when the continent was part of the Gondwana land-mass," Goel said.
Scientists believe that most of the land masses in the Southern Hemisphere and India were once part of a massive super-continent called Gondwana.
Calls to the Ocean Development Department went unanswered on Sunday.
Indian officials are in Australia this week to brief the Scientific Committee on Antarctica Research, an organisation charged with coordinating research and environmental protection in Antarctica, the newspaper reported.
Representatives of a coalition of nations operating in Antarctica are not happy with India's plans.
"That the proposed station would be in the middle of a virtually final ASMA does not help India's case," James Barnes, the executive director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition told the newspaper from France.
However, Goel said India would make sure there was no environmental impact in the area.
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