Narendra Kumar Swain (BJD) raised the Mahanadi water dispute, seeking clarifications on the list of approved barrages and projects in the Mahanadi upper basin under Chhattisgarh Government in the Rajya Sabha.
On replying to Swain’s queries, Minister of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Dr Sanjeev Kumar Balyan laid down the names of the projects, numbering 15, approved for Chhatisgarh.
He named Mahanadi Reservoir Project, Sutiapat Irrigation Project, Mongra Irrigation Project, Minimata (Hasdeo) Bango Multipurpose Project (Revised) and Arpa Bhaisajhar Barrage Project, among others.
The Minister further made it clear that the Central Water Commission (CWC) carried out techno-economic appraisal of major and medium irrigation projects (Command area more than 2,000 hectare) which are planned on inter-State river/river basin.
Thus it is already an established fact that the Government of Chhattisgarh has constructed a number of barrage projects in the upper Mahanadi basin upstream of Hirakud reservoir, without consulting the co-basin State of Odisha.
Odisha has never been informed about such developments either by the Government of Chhattisgarh or by the CWC. It has now come to the fore that the Arpa-Bhaisajhar Project is an ongoing project and six more such barrages are being constructed having the prior approval of the technical advisory committee of the Ministry of Water Resources in the same Arpa river out of which three projects have already been completed. Out of these seven projects in the Arpa river, the DPR of only Arpa-Bhaisajhar Project had been forwarded to the Government of Odisha whereas Odisha has no knowledge about other projects.
Speaking to The Pioneer, Swain maintained that it was a clear conspiracy by both the Chhatishgarh Government and the Central Government to have carried out the projects by keeping Odisha in dark.
Swain further said that Odisha has sought intervention of the Prime Minister on July 4 2016, besides taking the matter to several agencies, including the CWC, to safeguard the interest of millions of farmers of Odisha.
He stated that all these efforts ended in a fiasco since the Central Government accorded approval to the Arpa-Bhaisajhar Project on September 30, 2016 even after a tripartite discussion held at New Delhi on July 29, 2016.