Govt assures SC it will continue with river-linking

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/833065.cms

Govt assures SC it will continue with river-linking

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2004 06:37:38 AM ]

NEW DELHI: The Congress-led UPA government on Monday told the Supreme Court that it would keep the previous NDA government's ambitious of Rs 5,00,000-crore river inter-linking project flowing.

Solicitor-general G E Vahanvati said that the Centre had in principle decided not to go back on the project. However, the matter would be placed before the Union Cabinet for a comprehensive review in September.

A Bench of Justices Y K Sabharwal, D M Dharmadhikari and P B Naolekar allowed six weeks' time to the Centre to inform it about the project. Counsel Ranjit Kumar and Nikhil Nayar, who assisted the court in this matter, said that a task force set up at the behest of the apex court for implementation of the project was headless as the post of its chairman was lying vacant after Suresh Prabhu's resignation. Under these circumstances, the entire project has remained in limbo since the new government took over at the Centre.

Kumar further said that the standing committee of the water resources ministry had submitted a report stating that the Centre should give top priority to inter-linking of rivers in view of the drought and floods faced by the states.

Realising the significance of President A P J Abdul Kalam's speech on the eve of Independence Day in 2003, suggesting inter-linking of rivers to curtail shortage of water and control floods, Kumar had moved the SC in October seeking a direction to the Centre to submit a progress report on the project.

The SC has already rejected the Centre's plea that the linking of rivers was time-consuming and would take at least 40 more years to work out. It asked the government to link the rivers by 2012. Later, the government said that it was possible to get the major rivers inter-linked by the year 2016.

In an affidavit, the Centre had said the task force held dialogues with state governments to forge a consensus on acceptable linkages or alternatives.