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Kerala not for move to transfer waters to T.N.

By Gargi Parsai

NEW DELHI MARCH 26. Kerala, at the Annual General Meeting of the National Water Development Agency Society (NWDA) today, told the Minister of Water Resources, Arjun Charan Sethi, that the proposal to divert waters to Vaippar areas of Tamil Nadu from the Pamba-Achankovil rivers in Kerala should be abandoned.

"Time and again Kerala has expressed strong views against long distance inter-basin water transfer proposals, which are likely to create complicated water management problems. This is more so, where full consent of affected States is not obtained,'' the Kerala Water Resources Minister, T.M. Jacob, told the meeting.

The NWDA is assisting the Task Force on Interlinking Rivers by conducting pre-feasibility and feasibility studies of the 30 links conceived under the plan. Mr. Arjun Charan Sethi is the president of the Governing Body of the Society, which also met today.

Alleging that the proposal of the NWDA was "nothing but a proposal for export of water from Kerala to Tamil Nadu'', Mr. Jacob said Kerala cannot agree to this inter-basin transfer.

"Pamba and Achankovil rivers are not inter-State rivers and as such, nobody has any legal right to seek water diversion, unless Article 262 of the Constitution and the State Entry List 17 are amended,'' he said. Kerala disputed the feasibility study done by the NWDA on the Pamba-Achankovil-Vaippar Link Project.

It said while envisaging the transfer of 20 per cent of surplus water from these west-flowing rivers of Kerala to Tamil Nadu, the NWDA neither considered the spatial and temporal availability and demand aspects, nor the ecological and environmental impact of the proposal.

The NWDA study, done 20 years ago, was limited to a small intercepted catchment without taking into consideration the total river system feeding the Vembanad lake.

Mr. Jacob told the meeting that the State had got independent studies done by the CWRDM, Kozhikode, covering all six rivers draining into the Vembanad lake and found that the Vembanad wetland system will face water shortage by the year 2051.

The meeting then decided that the NWDA and the CWRDM, Kozhikode, would together conduct studies to reconcile their respective findings.

"The Centre will not force any link on anybody,'' Mr. Sethi assured the meeting.

The meeting also discussed the Ken-Betwa link involving Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and agreed that both the States should come up with Master Plans. It was agreed to advance the Yamuna-Rajasthan link to 2003-04 from 2005-06.

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