the goan I network
PANAJI
The Opposition Congress continued to rake up the Mhadei imbroglio to keep the pressure on the Pramod Sawant-led government holding protests at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar even though protests by students of the national capital took to the streets against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Top Congress leaders including three former chief ministers of Goa - Digambar Kamat, Luizinho Faleiro and Francisco Sardinha - joined dozens of party activists led by GPCC president Girish Chodankar at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Sunday.
At the protests, the Congress accused the BJP-led governments in Goa and at the Centre of “politically victimising” the State’s interests to favour neighbouring Karnataka over the diversion of Mhadei waters for its controversial drinking water dam project at Kalasa-Bandhura.
Chodankar said, they have submitted a memo addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which demands immediate withdrawal of the letter issued by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) to Karnataka for the project.
The top Goa leaders handed over the memorandum addressed to Modi to the security personnel at Jantar Mantar.
It said, the Kalasa-Bandura project will lead to an “ecological disaster” in Goa and affect over one-third of the State’s population and render them ‘ecological refugees’.
Terming the MoEF&CC letter to Karnataka a virtual nod for the Kalsa-Bandura diversion project, the Congress memorandum to the PM said: “It was done to win by-elections in Karnataka. The people of Goa will never support any diversion of water from Mhadei which is a lifeline of our State.”
The dispute with Karnataka over Mhadei river waters dates back three decades.
It further said, the central government under your (PM’s) leadership does not respect sentiments of Goans and that, any decision favouring Karnataka, would cascade into an irreversible ecological disaster in Goa leading to salinisation, desertification and collapse of fisheries and tourism industries.
“More than half a million people in 190 villages in Goa may turn into ecological refugees and the international community would not tolerate such a situation,” the memorandum adds.
The vexed conflict between the two States flared up again recently after after a top MoEF&CC official wrote to the Karnataka irrigation department.
There was no need for an ‘environmental clearance’ for the Rs 841 crore Kalasa-Bandura dam project, he had said.
The Sawant-led government has opposed the MoEF&CC nod to dam the Mhadei river at Kalasa-Bandhura and divert water to the Malaprabha river basin, ostensibly for a drinking water project.
