The Supreme Court today directed the government to place before it the final report of the expert committee which is examining the feasibility of pushing the controversial Sethusamudram project through Dhanuskodi instead of Rama Sethu.

A bench comprising justices H L Dattu and C K Prasad said the report of the Prime Minister-appointed panel, headed by noted environmentalist R K Pachauri, has not been placed within the deadline of February, 2011, set by the apex court.

Additional Solicitor General Haren Raval told the bench that he received the report on December 29, 2011, and on January 3 he wrote a letter to the panel on certain issues, to which the reply was awaited.

He said the panel would take some time to prepare the executive summary of the report.

The bench wanted to know from him whether the Centre has complied with the apex court order of April 21, 2010, by which it was asked to place the report of the panel by February 2011.

During the resumed hearing, Swamy said the concerned authority should see whether an alternative route is possible without touching the Rama Sethu.

He submitted when the Madras High Court was hearing his orginal petition, the Centre was asked to declare Rama Sethu as a national monument.

"Let government say whether they intend to make it a national monument," he said.

The bench said it will go into the issues one by one after the report is placed before it and posted the matter for hearing on March 23.

The apex court had considered the stand of the expert committee that it was not technically feasible to give any opinion or report on the basis of data collected for a shorter period of three months.

The interim report pointed out that given the variations in ocean currents, wind patterns and related sedimentation as well as other phenomenon, it would be incomplete to arrive at Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on the basis of information which is less than the entire annual cycle of 365 days.

Swamy had moved an application seeking scrapping of the project claiming National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), which is the expert body of government, has doubted its feasibility.

He had submitted that it was unlikely that the government would come out soon with the report of the expert committee which has an enormous task of collecting huge data.

He said some decision on the project has to be taken as the verdict on it was reserved on July 30, 2008.

The Centre had said the preliminary report of the NIO, which according to opponents of the project has doubted its feasibility, cannot be taken as final and binding on the expert committee.

The affidavit, filed by the Ministry of Shipping, had said the expert committee in its November 10, 2009, meeting discussed the inputs provided by the NIO and further nominated it for conducting the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) in 18 months.

The Centre had suggested the NIO will take a year or so to collect the data on EIA as the study of ocean for collecting data cannot be completed in three or four months.