Mahadayi: MoEF rejects Goa request to withdraw consent

In a snub to the Goa government, the Prakash Javadekar-led Union Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) has rejected its demand for withdrawal of a letter giving nod to the Kalasa-Banduri project in Karnataka.

Javadekar, in a letter to Chief Minister, Pramod Sawant, has however agreed to form a committee to go into the demands made by an all-party delegation led by Sawant, which met the Union minister earlier this month and pleaded with him to withdraw his ministry’s consent to the project.

The letter, released to the media on Tuesday, said that a committee would be constituted to look into the issues raised by Goa in detail.

The Congress in Goa has accused Sawant as well as Javadekar of misleading the people of Goa on the Mahadayi issue and committing gross injustice to the people of the tiny state as well as its flora and fauna.

“Sawant and Javadekar have let the people of Goa down. Javadekar’s letter means nothing for Goa. We would have expected that the MoEF letter allowing the project would be at least kept in abeyance or withdrawn, but nothing like that has happened. Our CM has not done enough for his people,” Leader of Opposition Digambar Kamat told reporters in Panaji.

Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, however, expressed faith in Javadekar. “I have spoken to Prakash Javadekar. There will be no injustice to Goa, I can say for sure. And within a short span of time, what Goa state wants, will be done,” Sawant told DH.

Sawant had led an all-party delegation to meet Javadekar on November 4, seeking a withdrawal of the Ministry’s green nod to the project, by arguing that the Rs. 841 crore Kalasa-Bhandura project across the banks of the Mahadayi river, would devastate Goa’s ecology.

Sawant’s leadership credentials are being questioned by the Opposition for being unable to stop the Kalasa-Banduri project despite the three governments involved — Karnataka, Goa and the Centre — are headed by the BJP. The chief minister in the past had also threatened to go to the National Green Tribunal to challenge the MoEF nod to the project.

The Mahadayi river originates in Karnataka and meets the Arabian Sea in Panaji in Goa, while briefly flowing through Maharashtra.

An inter-state water disputes tribunal, set up by the central government, after hearing the over two-decade-old dispute among Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra over river-water sharing, had, in its award in August 2018, allotted 13.42 tmcft from the Mahadayi river basin (including 3.9 tmcft for diversion into the depleted Malaprabha river basin) to Karnataka. Maharashtra has been allotted 1.33 tmcft.