Gujarat government must own responsibility for breach: Medha
NEW DELHI: Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader Medha Patkar on Saturday said here that the Gujarat government should accept responsibility for the breach — the third one — in the Narmada dam’s main canal that inundated five villages, caused heavy damage to crops and property and put people’s lives at risk.
According to her the breach exposed the manner in which the works on the Narmada dam (Sardar Sarovar Project) were “pushed,” at the cost of quality and safety, only to show to the courts how the dam had reached a certain level of construction and could not be stopped even while nearly two lakh people in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat faced displacement.
Conditional clearance
She said in December last the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests had written to the Union Ministry of Water Resources to suspend financial assistance for the Command Area Development till a Master Plan for it was put in place as is the procedure. In granting its “conditional clearance” to the project, the Planning Commission too had set the pre-condition that the drainage works would have to be completed in advance. Both the conditions had been flouted she alleged.
Urging the Centre to restrain the Narmada Control Authority from giving a green signal to the Gujarat government for further raising the height of the dam from the current 121.92 metres to the final height of 138.68 metres, she said, “this is a very serious matter. The major breach in the canal in Mehsana district not only raises questions about the quality and planning of the massive surface canal network, but threatens the lives of thousands of canal-adjacent villagers.”
Ms. Patkar said over 18 villages inundated in the earlier breaches in the main canal in 2004 were neither compensated nor given any protection from future risks. “The entire canal network, which is far from complete, is now considered unsafe finally compelling the Gujarat government to go in for a technical survey of the 458-long-main Narmada dam canal.”
Quoting the reports of the 0Comptroller and Auditor-General for Gujarat (Commercial) for the year ending March 2007, she said they pointed to corruption, irregularities and poor quality of works on the branch and sub-branch canals leading to the risk of breaching. Further, she said that wrong alignments of canals had led to water logging at several places. “Worst of all, the Narmada dam project does not even recognise the families affected by the canal system as project affected leaving them to fend for themselves.”
The Centre was giving the highest assistance under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme to the Sardar Sarovar Project. While Rs. 8,377 crore had been provided for the canal system, only 61,941 hectares of irrigation had been achieved against 4,35,834 hectares potential created. The NBA’s major demand was cost-benefit analysis of the project, she said.
. <<back
