Ambitious interlinking of river projects will get new impetus under the Narendra Modi government, but the Centre would like to select the specific project for implementation very cautiously. Its focus will first be on linking rivers of sub-basins within a basin or nearby basins instead of going on for distant inter-basin river linkages.
“Government will first take up those inter-basin rivers for linking which are close to each other, keeping in mind its feasibility and utility to larger beneficiaries,” environment minister Prakash Javadekar said.
He told TOI that this is an inter-ministerial matter which would soon be discussed thoroughly. “We will do the interlinking of rivers in a manner that it simultaneously takes care of drinking-water \ irrigation needs of people and ecological concerns,” the minister added.
Though the interlinking of river (ILR) was mooted way back in 1982, it was actively taken up during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s tenure as Prime Minister during 1999-2004. It, however, fell off the radar once the UPA came to power.
The UPA did take it up only during its last year in office after the Supreme Court had in February, 2012 directed the Centre to implement the ILR project in a time-bound manner and appointed a high-powered committee for its planning and implementation.
The full ILR project has two components — the peninsular and the Himalayan. The peninsular component involving the rivers in southern India — envisaged developing a ‘Southern Water Grid’ with 16 river linkages in different states.
This component included diversion of the surplus waters of Mahanadi and Godavari to the Pennar, Krishna, Vaigai and Cauvery rivers.
The Himalayan component, on the other hand, was conceived for building storage reservoirs on the Ganga and the Brahmaputra and their main tributaries both in India and Nepal in order to conserve water during the monsoon for irrigation and generation of hydro-power, besides checking floods.
The Himalayan component is comprised of 14 links including Brahamputra-Ganga, Kosi-Ghagra, Kosi-Mech, Ghagra-Yamuna, Gandak-Ganga, Sarda-Yamuna, Farakka-Sunderbans, Subernarekha-Mahanadi, and Ganga-Damodar-Subernarekha.
Both the components together have 30 river-linking projects.
Under the UPA, the detailed project reports (DPR) of only three projects — including interstate Ken-Betwa river link — had been prepared. Though total cost of all the river linking projects has been estimated at around Rs 5,60,000 crore, the actual cost will be known only after the DPRs of all the rive link projects are drawn up.
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The projects — which have, so far, more or less remained on papers — will make water available for irrigating 35 million hectares, generate hydro electricity to the tune of 34,000MW and control floods in many states across the country, if implemented.
The Ken-Betwa river link is one of the projects which got its green signal from the apex court following a tripartite memorandum of understanding signed between the Centre and the chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
