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.
