Tiru river that flows through parts of Nanded district and the barrage on it has become dry before the start of winter
Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar : Maharashtra govt said a preliminary project report for Marathwada Water Grid would be prepared afresh, seven years after the then govt in 2019 said the detailed project report (DPR) was ready. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Nov 6 met a senior delegation of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in Mumbai and directed officials to accelerate the project.
He told them to upload the preliminary project report immediately and forward it to the Union finance ministry’s department of economic affairs.
JICA has responded positively to a loan of around Rs20,000 crore for the first phase of the project, an official release said. It stated that the state planned to complete Marathwada Water Grid’s execution by 2029. In 2019, then water supply and sanitation minister Babanrao Lonikar had said the DPR for the water grid was ready and the work in the first phase would begin before the Assembly elections that year.
Another water rights activist, Abhijeet Dhanorkar, said neither the state govt nor officials clarified if the DPR prepared by the Israeli firm would be used, updated or set aside for the new Japanese firm-backed exercise and if the fresh DPR would mean a new cost to the exchequer.
“Rs22 crore was said to have been paid to the firm for the DPR. The state govt must make public what happened with the earlier plan before making a fresh announcement,” water rights activist Narhari Shivpure said. The announcement has revived an old claim. Chief minister Fadnavis also could not be reached for comments on the issue. The work never started.
A senior official from the irrigation department said the Israeli firm had earlier designed the water grid project taking into account the needs of drinking water and irrigation. A few tenders were floated for the project after budgetary allocation, but it apparently did not progress as expected,” the official said, requesting anonymity. “Later, the project was envisaged only for the needs of drinking water in the first phase.