PANAJI
Despite Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant’s insistence that Goa “shall fight to the hilt for each drop of Mhadei water”, the State’s contentions have had little effect on the Union government and its ministers, who have completely ignored repeated requests and ‘warnings’ to the Centre against processing permissions for the Mhadei project.
Case in point is the letter that Chief Minister Chief Minister Pramod Sawant addressed to Union Minister for Jal Shakti Gajendra Singh Sekhawat in March 2020, in which he told the Union Minister that there could be “no question of considering any request of Karnataka for diversion of such waters.”
“Karnataka may attempt to seek your approval for such diversion outside the basin relying upon the Award of the Mahadayi Water Disputes Tribunal dated 14.08.2018. In this regard, we wish to state that the Award dated 14.08.2018 is pending before the Supreme Court. All the parties -- Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra -- have challenged the said Award before the Supreme Court and the matters are fixed for final hearing on 15.07.2020,” Sawant had informed the Union Minister in the letter written back in 2020.
“Karnataka is likely to submit a proposal before you for such diversion. Such a proposal should not be considered in view of above-mentioned reasons as the same is going to have far reaching consequences on the State of Goa. In any case, if any proposal is submitted by Karnataka, we must be given a copy of the same and our objections should also be considered. Karnataka is likely to submit the proposal which may not be even in consonance with the Award of the Tribunal,” the Chief Minister had said.
Goa’s requests, have clearly had very little effect on the decisions taken by the Centre, who has not only processed Karnataka’s DPR, but also did so without keeping Goa in the loop and without even giving Goa a copy of Karnataka’s DPR, something that the Union Minister Gajendra Singh Sekhawat had specifically said he would do in a letter dated 29th July 2020, something Sawant has admitted hasn’t been done.
“So far as the issue of sharing the copy of the project proposal to the co-basin States is concerned, as per the existing norms, “copy of PFR (pre-feasibility report) of any project proposed in the river basin for which no tribunal award or inter-State agreement exists, will be circulated to the co-basin States by the project authority. Central Water Commission (CWC) will send a copy of the PFR to resident commissioner of the party States in New Delhi.”
“However, it is felt that in the above norms there is no bar in sharing the PFR/DPR of the project proposed in the river basin for which the Tribunal award has been notified, to the co-basin States by the project authority and I have already instructed the CWC to send a copy of the PFR/DPR to the resident commissioner of party States in New Delhi,” Sekhawat had assured Sawant in July 2020.
Sekhawat had also made it clear while quoting from the Tribunal order, which ruled that “the upper riparian states of Karnataka and Maharashtra, though do require, requisite clearances and approvals, as required by law and from the Central government, and the Planning Commission (now Niti Aayog), but they do not require any prior consent of the lower riparian State of Goa and similarly the State of Maharashtra, being an upper riparian State vis-a-vis the State of Goa, also does not require any such prior consent of the State of Goa.”
