At a time when its image has taken a severe dent over Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s insensitive “urine in dam” comment, the Congress-led DF Government was on Monday upbraided yet again by the Bombay High Court over the the inordinate delay in appointing the three members of the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority (MWRRA).
The High Court set a week’s deadline to the State Government for filling the vacancies in MWRRA.
Hearing of a petition by two Solapur farmers demanding release of water in Ujjani dam, a HC division bench of Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice MS Sanklecha observed: “The chairperson of the authority retired in 2011 and a member in 2012. Since then the posts have been lying vacant. This inaction on part of the government is the reason behind this complication (drought)”.
Monday’s was the second reprimand given by the High Court to the Maharashtra Government on the issue, in less than a week.
On April 9, the same bench had cited the vacant posts in the MWRRA as the reason for ordering the State Government to release water to Ujjani dam from other dams in Pune region “within 24 hours”.
Bowing to the verdict, the State Water Resources department next day released 4 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) of water from Bhama Akshed and Andra dams to Ujjani dam.
During Monday’s hearing, the Government pleader SS Shinde admitted in the court though the State Government had released 4 TMC of water from Bhama Akshed and Andra dams, large volumes of the released would be lost due to seepage, evaporation and theft during the course of the journey of water from the two dams to
Ujjani dam.
“The water would take around 40 days to reach Ujjani dam. Due to theft, seepage and evaporation, the amount of water that will finally reach Ujjani dam will not be very significant,” Shinde said.
Bhama Akshed dam is situated about 280 kms away from Ujjani, which falls in the lok Sabha constituency of Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, while the second dam is nearly 330 kms away.
Queried as to why water could not have been released from the Khadakwasla dam which is closer to Ujjani, Shinde said it would not be possible as the basins and valleys were different.