‘Javadekar letter on Kalasa-Banduri has no legal standing’
Panaji: Union Minister for Environment and Forests Prakash Javadekar’s recent letter to the Karnataka government stating that the Kalasa-Banduri project does not need environmental clearance has no legal standing, Goa’s Water Resources Minister Filipe Neri Rodrigues said on Thursday.
Addressing a press conference at the state Secretariat, Rodrigues said that Karnataka had already started diverting water from the Mhadei river basin without waiting for the notification of the Mhadei Inter-State Water Dispute Tribunal.
“This letter will not have any legal standing as far as the matter before the Supreme Court is concerned. There may be more letters, more correspondence. They may put up further demands. We should not get disturbed because of their correspondence. There is no value for this letter as regards to starting work of Kalasa-Banduri canal,” Rodrigues said.
The Goa government has already filed a special leave petition which has accused Karnataka of illegally diverting the river water.
“Water is cut off and diverted from the Mhadei basin because of construction of the canal,” Rodrigues said, adding that a team from his ministry had documented the illegal diversion of water from the Mhadei basin in Karnataka with evidence.
Javadekar and Chief Minister Pramod Sawant faced a fresh round of criticism on Tuesday, after the former in his capacity as MoEF Minister wrote to Karnataka Home Minister Basvaraj Bommai on December 24, saying the Karnataka government could proceed with the water diversion project after the 2018 award on the Mhadei interstate water dispute is formally notified by the Central Government.
Incidentally, on December 18, an MoEF official in a letter to the Karnataka government had said that an earlier letter from the central ministry giving a green nod to the Kalasa-Banduri had been kept in abeyance.
The Goa government has opposed the project claiming diversion of water from the Mhadei basin would cause “ecological devastation” in the coastal state, where nearly half the population of 1.5 million depends on Mhadei river water.
The Mhadei river originates in Karnataka and meets the Arabian Sea near Panaji in Goa, while briefly flowing through Maharashtra. An interstate water disputes tribunal, set up by the central government, after hearing the over two-decade-old Mhadei river water sharing dispute among Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra, in August 2018 allotted 13.42 thousand million cubic feet (TMC) (including 3.9 TMC for diversion into the depleted Malaprabha river basin) to Karnataka and 1.33 TMC to Maharashtra.