The Hindu : National : Court seeks progress report on river grid project

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 28, 2004

National

National

Court seeks progress report on river grid project

By Our Legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI, APRIL 27. The Supreme Court has asked the Centre to furnish in four months details on the progress made on the court's suggestion for enacting legislation to take control of rivers across the country to facilitate their inter-linking.

A Bench of Justice Y.K. Sabharwal and Justice B.N. Agrawal told counsel for the Centre that in October 2002, it had asked the Centre to pass a law on the inter-linking of waters. It seemed that no substantial progress had been made in this regard, the Bench said and granted four months to file an affidavit in this regard.

The Bench wanted all the eight feasibility reports prepared by the Special Task Force so far on inter-linking of rivers to be put on a website. The Bench also asked the Special Task Force on the inter-linking of rivers to submit a feasibility report on the inter-linking of Parbati, Chambal and Kali Sindhi rivers in which Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan were involved.

On behalf of the Special Task Force, the Bench was informed that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) had been signed among the three States to facilitate inter-linking. But certain differences were yet to be sorted out. The Chief Ministers of the three States had held meetings to hammer out a solution and the task force was hopeful that an amicable solution would be found. Amicus curiae Ranjit Kumar told the Bench that the progress on preparing feasibility reports was very slow and such reports for only 8 out of the 31 linkages had been prepared so far. Going by this speed it would not be possible to prepare all the feasibility reports by the 2006 deadline.

In its status report, the Centre submitted that there appeared to be a general political consensus for networking of rivers provided it was implemented with due care and all relevant aspects including environment and social concerns fully addressed. All Chief Ministers with the possible exception of Kerala had indicated their support, provided the interests of the States were duly safeguarded.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National