SC orders filing of report on financial viability of river interlinking project

SC said it might not favour the project if it meant a huge financial burden on govt.

Questioning whether the interlinking of rivers would require land acquisition,the Supreme Court on Monday said it might not favour the project if it meant a huge financial burden on the government.

My concern is only on what is the financial liability of the project. We want to make it clear that we would not pass order on it if it causes huge financial burden, observed a three-judge Bench,headed by Chief Justice S H Kapadia.

The Bench,also comprising Justices K S Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar,directed amicus curie and senior advocate Ranjit Kumar to file a report on the financial viability of the project in a months time. The next hearing is scheduled for January 2012.

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What would be the cost of networking? When rivers are networked,are lands also to be acquired? asked the bench,telling the amicus to submit his report within a month.

The river interlinking project was a brainchild of the NDA government and in October 2002,the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had formed a task force to get the project going against the backdrop of the acute drought that year.

The task force had submitted a report recommending division of the project into two the Peninsular component and the Himalayan component. The Peninsular component involving the rivers in southern India involved diversion of the surplus waters of the Mahanadi and Godavari to the Pennar,Krishna,Vaigai and Cauvery.

The Himalayan component envisaged building storage reservoirs on the Ganga and the Brahmaputra and their main tributaries both in India and Nepal to conserve monsoon waters for irrigation and generation of hydro-power,besides checking floods.

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