Link rivers to end Cauvery dispute, suggests Madhya Pradesh chief minister

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Wednesday that linking rivers could help solve water crises faced by many states. Talking to DH here on the sidelines of a road show for the upcoming ‘Global Investors Summit-2016,’ on October 22 and 23 in Indore, Chouhan said, “River-linking is one of the solutions which all states should consider.”

“Water has ignited fire in Bengaluru, which is an unfortunate incident the IT city has witnessed,” Chouhan said. Chouhan claimed that Madhya Pradesh was the first state to opt for interlinking major rivers. “We linked rivers Narmada and Shipra within 13 months and brought over 16 lakh hectares of land under irrigation. We spent over Rs 400 crore for this project,” Chouhan said.

“The state has already realised former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s dream of river interconnectivity,” he said. “We did the interlinking before Kumbh Mela in May. The Shipra river was full of water, though it was the month of May. We were drawing water from Narmada and putting it in Shipra. We had to link the two rivers over a 200-km distance,” he added.

“Now, we plan to link Gambhir, Parvati and Kalisindh rivers with the Narmada. Fortunately, Narmada is a perennial river,” Chouhan said.

‘Power surplus’“With no scarcity of water in Madhya Pradesh, the state is now surplus in power. We are selling power to Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. We have been surplus for the past three years. At least, 20% of the power that we actually produce is sold to other states,” Chouhan said.

Madhya Pradesh has shown a nearly seven-fold increase in the installed capacity of renewable energy in the last five years (332 MW in financial year 2011 to 2,567 MW in financial year 2016), Chouhan said.