India shelves project to interlink rivers after Bangladesh complaint in UN

[Naveed Yaseen]

* Minister says project to be human, economic, ecological disaster
* Jairam Ramesh says Kishanganga power project to continue

By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: India has finally shelved an ambitious project to interlink rivers after Bangladesh lodged a complaint with the United Nations.

The project, envisaged by the previous National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, was expected to cost Rs 5.6 trillion. India’s Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said on Monday that the project would be a “human, economic and an ecological disaster”.

Project: He, however, said the plans to divert River Neelam’s water to construct the 330MW Kishanganga power project near Wullar Lake would continue. The minister’s declaration came nearly a month after the Congress party’s general secretary and scion, Rahul Gandhi, opposed the idea at a press interaction in Chennai. He had raised questions on the environmental feasibility of the project. “It is a disastrous idea. It is an idea that will be extremely dangerous to the environment of the country,” he said.

Asked if no more environmental clearances would come on linking rivers, Jairam said he was not opposed to local-level inter-basin transfer of waters. Favouring Ken-Betwa (North India) and Krishna-Godavari (South India) linking projects, he said all other projects would be taken on a case-to-case basis.

Jairam said the issue of interlinking rivers had international ramifications as well. Bangladesh and Nepal had already expressed their apprehensions, with the former even lodging a complaint against India with the United Nations, he said.

When then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had abdicated office following the electoral rout of NDA in May 2004 polls, he had personally scribbled a request for his successor Dr Manmohan Singh, asking him to continue with his two ambitious projects – the Golden Quadrilateral – under which the four metros were to be connected directly through road to boost traffic and trade and the interlinking of rivers.

Vajpayee had set up a task force under Suresh Prabhu in October 2002 for activating the river-linking project in the background of the severe drought that year. The task force in its report divided the project into the Himalayan component involving northern rivers and peninsular component with southern rivers.

The Himalayan component envisaged construction of storage reservoirs

on the main Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers and their principal tributaries in India and Nepal so as to conserve monsoon flows for irrigation and hydro-power generation, besides flood control. It had identified 14 links involving, Kosi-Mech, Kosi-Ghagra, Gandak-Ganges, Ghagra-Yamuna, Sarda-Yamuna, Yamuna-Rajasthan, Rajasthan-Sabarmati, Brahmaputra-Ganges, Farakka-Sunderbans, Ganges-Damodar-Subernarekha and Subernarekha-Mahanadi rivers.

The peninsular component involved development of a ‘Southern Water Grid’ envisaging 16 linkages. The peninsular component included diversion of surplus flows of Mahanadi and Godavari rivers to Krishna, Pennar, Cauvery and Vaigai, diversion of west-flowing rivers of Kerala and Karnataka to the east and interlinking small rivers flowing along the west coast.

The task force had concluded that linking rivers would increase irrigation potential to 160 million hectare for all crops by the year 2050, while the maximum irrigation potential that could have been created through conventional sources had been estimated at 140 million hectare.

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