The Supreme Court’s intervention in the rivers inter-linking case came in the background of an interesting event after the then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam dwelt on the benefits of the project at great length in his address to the nation on the eve of republic day in 2002.
The project considered as “the dream project” of Dr Kalam and Mr Atal Behari Vajpyee, who headed the NDA government at that time, caught the attention of the apex court bench, headed by Chief Justice as nothing was seen as visibly moving on the issue after about six months of the presidential address.
The top court had issued suo motu notice to the government for registering a PIL and the things started moving forward with the NDA government setting up a “task force” under the then Union minister Suresh Prabhu.
However, he resigned from the post after UPA under Congress came to power in 2004 and till then substantial work was done on preparing of feasibility reports on different identified links by the task force.
Though the project was also considered by the British rulers as early as in 1834 with Sir Arthur Cotton assigned the job to examine its feasibility but the disturbances due to the 1857 upsurge got it scuttled. But at that time the idea was only to build water ways for transporting raw material, especially cotton and neel (indigo) for different port for shipment to England.
But after the 1857 upsurge, British government abandoned the scheme, finding it too costly, and instead decided to introduce railways in the country.
The Arthur Cotton scheme proposed to build dams on Krishna and also suggested linking of Ganga in the north with Kaveri in the South. Later in 1930 C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar, a native expert also suggested the river liking scheme to the British government.
Though many political leaders in the country talked about the scheme after Independence but no one took serious initiative till Vajypee government put it on the agenda and he found a strong votary in the then President, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.