New Delhi, March 23: Non-compliance with environmental norms has led the environment ministry-appointed Expert Apparisal Committee of River Valley Projects (EACRVP) to call for a halt to all work on the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) and its feeder Indira Sagar Project (ISP).

The two projects are being implemented by the Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan governments. Both are plagued with cost overruns and a recent RTI query led to the disclosure that Rs 29,000 crores has been spent on the SSP alone till date, while its original allocation in 1988 was Rs 6,406 crores.
The Planning Commi-ssion’s working group on water resources has estimated that the cost of the SSP might shoot up to Rs 70,000 crores by 2012.
The EACRVP, headed by Dr Devender Pandey, former director-general of the Forest Survey of India, highlighted that despite these two giant dams being cleared two decades back, command development plans necessary to prevent
waterlogging and salinisation have not been fully implemented. The catchment area treatment (CAT) necessary to get environmental and forest clearance had also not been effected on the ground.
The Planning Commission and the Committee of Secretaries had identified the total catchment area for treatment at 1.501 million hectares — which works out to 29,000 hectares in Gujarat, 67,000 hectares in Maharashtra and the remaining 1,404,360 hect-ares in Madhya Pradesh.
As per the conditions of clearance, these areas were to be treated ahead of the filling of reservoirs. But the report states that the Narmada Valley Development Authority in MP has treated only 38 per cent of the stipulated area in SSP and only nine per cent of the stipulated area in case of the Indira Sagar Project. Maharashtra treated about 46,000 hectares (68 per cent of its area between 1992-2002), after which no progress has been reported. Gujarat completed its CAT plan, but it is building a network of canals without having a drainage plan in place.
It further highlights that Rajasthan is almost completing its canal network under the SSP without an environmental plan in place. Similarly, the MP government has been accused of starting unplanned irrigation under ISP from 2007 without even undertaking any study on what impact this would have on the environment.
The report emphasises the failure of states to notify all non-forest lands which will come under compensatory afforestation, and that monitoring of these have not been done satisfactorily. Even more serious is the charge that the states have not implemented the Environmental Health Action Plan, including screening of the workforce for diseases, construction of sanitary latrines and reinforcement of health delivery schemes.
Ms Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan points out that only 30 per cent of the SSP’s canal network has been constructed in 30 years, and 66,000 km of canals are yet to be constructed. “Gujarat’s farmers are unwilling to part with 3,000 hectares of land to build these canals, and the state
government is now thinking of using underground pipes as an alternative,” she said, adding: “The people of Kutch have moved the Supreme Court to demand that water be supplied to them, and not to Gandhinagar (Ahmedabad), while Maharashtra is demanding Rs 1,800 crores in compensation from Gujarat for loss in power allocation.”
 

Rashme Sehgal