Ahmedabad to get Narmada water from March 13

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Ahmedabad to get Narmada water from March 13 Thursday, March 8, 2001

GANDHINAGAR: Ahmedabad would start getting Narmada water via the Raska wier from March 13. Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel told a post-Cabinet news conference that, with this, "the current cut, in force for the past several months in Ahmedabad city, would come to an end". If the city has been getting 50 million gallons per day (MGD) of water till now, the total supply would go up to 85 MGD March 13 onwards.

The CM also announced that the Vadodara Municipal Corporation, too, would start getting drinking water from Narmada by this weekend. "The canal near Vadodara has already got water. At present, its gates are closed. They would be opened this week to transfer water to Ajwa. This would enable the city to get Narmada water by the weekend," water resources minister Narottam Patel said.

Other areas that would benefit from the Narmada water include villages of Bhavnagar, Amreli, Rajkot and Junagadh districts through a network of pipelines already in place in Saurashtra. However, neither did the CM nor the water resources minister clarify how much water these places would get and when. There was a hint that Vadodara, or the above mentioned places, would not need to tighten their belts as thought earlier.

Under the original project of Rs 103 crore, scaled down to Rs 43 crore, as many as 54 pipes with a diametre of four metres are being used for pumping out nearly 1,150 to 1,200 cusecs of water and flowing it into the Narmada canal. Another 44 such pipelines would be laid to take water to be pumped out of the Narmada reservoir to 1,500 cusecs.

A senior ruling BJP politician alleges that a lot of this water is being taken out of the reservoir and put into the canal by using a small bypass tunnel in "complete violation of the Narmada Control Authority guidelines". A bigger bypass tunnel is being constructed and used for channelling water within a week. "This is for the first time that Gujarat has not complied by the four lateral states' agreement," he said.

A top government official, refusing to comment on this for fear of its triggering a major controversy, says, "We are not talking about the bypass tunnel at all, as it is not in Gujarat's interests". He refuses to say how much water the state is getting by the bypass tunnel and how much more it would get in future. The NCA has already rejected the state's request to allow building a bypass tunnel.

Narmada water started flowing in the canal on February 27. On February 28, all the four dikes were filled by water from the Narmada reservoir. On March 1, water already reached 145 away, at the Mahi junction canal. On March 7, water filled up Panam Aquaduct. "We have gates at every 12.5 km on the Narmada canal. Only when water reaches about three metres do we open fresh gates", Narottam Patel said.

After a long time, the CM gave all the credit for the "good work" done in bringing the Narmada water to his known political opponent, Narottam Patel, a votary of Union textile minister Kashiram Rana. "This has been done in a record time," the CM said, adding, "The work has continued unabated despite the quake crisis."
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