Mumbai meeting on Mahadayi river dispute postponed

 The meeting to resolve the long-pending Mahadayi river dispute — that was to be chaired by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday — has been postponed.

“The meeting has been postponed, possibly it would be held after a fortnight’s time,” a top official in the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) told DH on Wednesday night. Fadnavis was to chair the meeting in which Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar were to be present. Fadnavis had taken lead in resolving the issue.

Asked about the reasons for the cancellation of the meeting, the CMO official said that there was a request from the Goa CM’s office that he would not be able to attend the meeting on Friday because of some urgent commitments and requested it to be rescheduled after 15 days.

The Mahadayi Water Dispute Tribunal, headed by J M Panchal, suggested the three states — Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka — resolve the issue through talks with or without a third-party mediation. Besides the chief ministers, water resources ministers and bureaucrats of the three neighbouring states were to attend the meeting.

The Mahadayi or Kalasa-Banduri project is undertaken by the Karnataka government to improve drinking water supply to the twin cities of Hubballi-Dharwad and irrigation in parts of Belagavi and Gadag districts. The project involves building barrages across Kalasa and Banduri, tributaries of the Mahadayi river, to divert 7 tmcft of water to the Malaprabha river, which supplies water for drinking as well as irrigation to parched areas.

The Karnataka government proposes to divert some water from the Mahadayi river to the Malaprabha river basin as part of the Kalasa-Banduri Nala project, as approximately 200 tmcft of water flows into the Arabian Sea. The Mahadayi Water Tribunal has to decide on the sharing of the river’s waters between Karnataka and Goa.