‘Maha delayed Lower Painganga project’

Nagpur: The centre on Wednesday squarely blamed the Maharashtra government for inordinate delay in completion of Lower Painganga project, pending since 1971. In an affidavit submitted before Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court, it stated that they had twice extended the deadline for the state government to submit detailed project report (DPR) for the project, which has been declared a national project, but it failed to do so till date.
The affidavit by Milind Panpatil, deputy director of Central Works Commission (CWC), was in response to the HC’s posers during the last hearing on March 3, where centre and state were asked to explain the reason behind delay and time expected for its completion. A division bench comprising justice Bhushan Gavai and justice Swapna Joshi then adjourned the plea by two weeks.
The PIL was filed by social activist Rahul Pugaliya through counsel Anil Kilor, who contended that despite being an important project, which is equivalent in capacity to Gosikhurd, the government has failed to complete it since over four decades.
Consequently, its cost escalated from just 1,042 crore in 1982 to over 10,000 crore in 2008-09, 13,000 crore in 2013, and 17,000 crore last year. The ambitious project is a joint venture between Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh governments and is supposed to irrigate about 2.27 lakh hectares, of which 88% will be in the state and 12% in Telangana.
The affidavit made it clear that irrigation projects are the sole responsibility of the states. Centre only acts as a catalyst for their early execution by providing assistance in the form of grants under various schemes, such as Accelerate Irrigation Benefits Programme (AIBP), including for national projects.
The existing ‘Guidelines for implementation of national projects’ say the state has to submit DPR in the prescribed format to CWC. In this case, the state submitted its first DPR in October 2012 for techno-economic appraisal. The CWC checked the proposal and pointed out that there was a change in scope of the proposal against the preliminary report, which was cleared by it in October 2011. It was noticed that four additional barrages were added downstream the dam, with a provision of irrigating an additional area of 26,759 hectares which were not a part of preliminary report, based on which “principle consent” for the preparation of DPR was granted.
The CWC then advised the state on May 2, 2014, to send an updated proposal incorporating revised hydrology costs along with environment and forest clearances for the portion located in Telangana. The state later said that updated proposal would be same one as per the preliminary report and requested for one-year extension till October 2014, which was again revised till December this year.
Panpatil said that the state is yet to submit DPR to CWC and till then their hands are tied, and they can’t officially accord national status to the project. He stated that since there was no pendency from centre’s side, and they had no role to play beyond this, their name should be deleted from the list of respondents.