The Ministry of Water Resources constituted a negotiation committee on Thursday to assess availability and utilisation of waters of Mahanadi and its tributaries following the water-sharing dispute between Odisha and Chhattisgarh.
The committee was set up following complaint from Odisha under section 3 of the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956 on utilization of waters of Mahanadi Basin. The committee will be chaired by Member Water Planning & Project, Central Water Commission and will have 11 other members comprising representatives from the States of Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Jharkhand. It will also have representatives from Ministries of Agriculture, Environment Forest and Climate Change, Water Resources besides the India Meteorological Department and Central Water Commission. The committee has been asked to submit its report within three months.
Chhattisgarh wants to build six dams and inter-link some Mahanadi tributaries for better irrigation and storage of water for the lean months in its state. But ODisha said it will deplete water in its main reservoir, the Hirakud dam.
In a meeting held with the Ministry of Water Resources last year, Chhattisgarh contended that the under-construction barrages will have a total capacity of 274 Million Cubic Meter (MCM), much less than the amount of water lost from the Hirakud dam due to siltation.
The State had further hammered in the point that live-storage capacity of its dams have also gone down due to siltation and storage capacity of new barrages would be less than that. However, the differences between the two states over the Mahanadi water sharing issue persisted.
Sources said Odisha wants a cumulative impact study of all projects developed by Chhattisgarh on the flow of water to the Hirakud dam, rather than individual, on the grounds that these projects dramatically reduce the water flow.