The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Babli: Maharashtra creates more “hurdles”

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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Babli: Maharashtra creates more “hurdles”

M. Malleswara Rao

HYDERABAD: Unmindful of the protests by Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra has taken fresh initiatives to establish an irrigation network system under Babli and the barrages. These initiatives have the potential to neutralise any determined effort by Andhra Pradesh to stop these projects.

Source in the Government here said that Maharashtra had launched a scheme to give loans to farmers to enable them to purchase heavy pumpsets/equipments to lift water from these projects. Each farmer is provided a loan of Rs. 50,000 an acre, the source added.

Pipelines

The AP Government has information that Maharashtra will not dig canals under these 12 projects but lay pipelines through the targeted ayacut area to facilitate water lifting by farmers using the pumpsets. The scheme is seen as an arrangement to build up a case to continue Babli and the barrages on the ground that an irrigation system is already existing.

Another initiative is that Maharashtra has set June as the deadline for the contractors to complete all the 12 projects. Avoiding the need to search for funds, it has floated a separate corporation Godavari Marathwada Irrigation Development Corporation headquartered at Aurangabad, to mobilise the money for these projects taken up at a cost of Rs. 150-200 crore each, a senior Irrigation official said.

Officials rue mistake

Andhra Pradesh officials are reportedly ruing their mistake in the petition filed before the Supreme Court in which the Government projected Babli as a dispute over land and not water. It complained that Maharashtra constructed Babli by encroaching into the reservoir area of Sriramsagar project and made only a passing reference to the 11 barrages as it apprehended that if a water dispute was raised, the apex court would refer the matter to a tribunal.

Under the Inter-State Water Disputes Act, the Supreme Court will have to necessarily refer a water dispute between two states to a tribunal. And the tribunal will take a few years to resolve the issue, allowing adequate time to complete a project.

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