Lo and behold! Maharashtra's Rs 4,845 crore irrigation project without water

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of an irrigation project? Water? Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case with the Union Union Ministry for Forests, Environment & Climate Change (MoEF). How else would it have cleared the the Rs 4,845 crore, 23.66 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) Krishna Marathwada Lift Irrigation Scheme (KMLIS) without water availability?

The environmental clearance given on 24th June 2015 says “the project involves lifting 21 TMC water from Ujjani reservoir.” Except this this is nearly 40% of the Bhima river (a tributary of the Krishna) dam's live storage capacity (54 TMC). “Where is the surplus water going to be available for any such diversion given how the Ujjani waters are already over-allocated?” asks Parineeta Dandekar of the South Asia Network for Dams, Rivers & People (SANDRP) which had highlighted the problems with this project to the MoEF on several occasions. “The project just does not have water availability certificate for 23.66 TMC water.” KMLIS is part of a bigger Krishna-Bhima stabilisation scheme planning to transfer 63 TMC water to Ujjani dam from Kolhapur which is 250 km away. “Only after this transfer could any water be diverted for the Krishna-Marathwada scheme,” underlines Dandekar. Incidentally, the state government has already acquired land through private negotiations, issued tenders and spent over Rs 400 crore on this project, which is littered with irregularities, absence of water availability, bad Environment Impact Analysis (EIA)  and violations.

Prakash Jawdekar who heads the Union MoEF said, “The expert committee had several sittings to discuss the project which was finally given green clearance on June 24th after a lot of deliberation.” On water availability, he passed the buck to the state government. His Maharashtra counterpart, Ramdas Kadam, said, “Its not like the project has been inaugurated and there is no water. We have factored in all the issues and will come up with a solution.” He refused to spell out what this entailed. “This only confirms our worst fears about irrigation infrastructure being created more with tenders and contracts in mind than water,” observed Dandekar who likened this to what was happening in the DF government.

Also, neither the Centre nor the state have any clarity on the niggling problem of the Krishna Water Disputes Award Tribunal (KWDT). In a November 2013 verdict, the tribunal categorically rejected any water transfer for the Krishna Bhima Stabilisation Scheme saying this will lead to lesser water for Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh downstream where the Krishna flows after its 303 km run in Maharashtra.

Don't the state government and Jawdekar, who hails from Maharashtra, know this? The secretary of Water Resources ministry V V Gaikwad in a letter (dated July 7th, 2009) had admitted that Krishna Marathwada Scheme cannot be designed at 21 TMC (the capacity then proposed which has since been up-scaled) water availability from Ujjani, but has to be scaled down at 7 TMC because of tribunal considerations. Amazingly, even then, there was little clarity on the source for even this 7 TMC water!

Despite all this, Maharashtra went ahead and started work on the KMLIS for 23.66 TMC availability long before applying for environment clearance. This violation of the Environmental Protection Act & EIA notification of Sept 2006 was front-paged by this newspaper on August, 8, 2014.

SANDRP has raised several questions about the EIA report on the project by Science and Technology Park, University of Pune. “It not only leaves out all mention of where the 23.66 TMC water will come from, but is also quiet on the 1,068 hectares of land required for the scheme in Ashti, Khuntephal of Beed district. This, despite many project-affected people repeatedly writing to the MoEF,” points out Dandekar. 

Dr Rajendra Jagdale of the Science and Technology Park, University of Pune defended the EIA. "We have diligently gone into every aspect of the project." Unwillling to accept that there is enough water in Ujjani he also rubbished claims of the extent and number of project affected. "We have  not come across anything like this."

Incidentally the Dr Madhav Chitale Committee set up in December 2012 after the furore and outrage over escalation of costs of various irrigation projects had also singled out KMLIS as a “flawed project,” recommending: “Detailed further investigation of this project by an independent committee and also action against officials.”

NCP then, BJP now?

The erstwhile Democratic Front government and its Water Resources Minister Ajit Pawar of the NCP got flak from the BJP on what came to be called the dam scam, after the state economic survey in 2008 observed that despite spending Rs 70,000 crore on projects, a mere 0.1% per cent land had been brought under irrigation.

Several eyebrows were raised over how, as CM, the same Fadnavis, took a sharp U-turn at a meeting held on April 8, 2015 at Osmanabad – with principal secretary (water resources) Malini Shankar and MLAs Rana Jagjitsingh Patil, Madhukarrao Chavan, Basavraj Patil, Rahul Mote, Jaydutt Kshirsagar, Dnyanraj Choughule and Bhimrao Ghode - where he pushed a project mired in irregularities.

“It was based on non-existent water availability and the environment impact analysis (EIA) report was quite shoddily done,” a senior bureaucrat of the Water Resources Department present at the meeting had then told dna. “Fadnavis had promised shifting of focus from non-performing, large dams and lift irrigation projects to small-scale sustainable projects and schemes.”