BJP TODAY

June 1--15, 2003 - Vol. 12, No. 11

Narendra Modi redeems pledge to take Narmada waters to Kachchcha
Plans to connect, figuratively, Mansarovar with Amarkantak
Arabinda Ghose

Taking Narmada waters to the parched Kachchcha district of Gujarat, described by prophets of doom as an impossible dream all these years, became a reality on the morning of May 18, 2003 when Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi released the flow of the sweet Narmada waters into a canal at Samakhiyali to the accompaniment of songs and dance by the village and townsfolk joined by almost everyone present with gay abandon.

A jubilant Narendra Modi, after returning to Gandhinagar, told this correspondent on telephone the same day that the Narmada waters would soon reach Bhuj, the headquarters of the arid, earthquake-hit district, and gradually all areas of this district boasting of bizarre, but arid nevertheless, terrain.

What was more, Narendra Modi said, he would work for taking the canals carrying Narmada waters to the Sardar Chowki CheckPost on Pakistan border upto which waters of the Sindhu (Indus) flow from Sind Province of that country and thus join the two flows for inter-linking the Sindhu with the Narmada - the first originating at Mansarovar in Tibat and the latter having its sources at Amarkanatak in Sahdol district of Madhya Pradesh.

May 18, 2003 is thus a Red Latter Day not only for Kachchcha district, but also for Gujarat and in fact India itself. It is probably for the first time in this country that waters of a river has been taken by a canal to a distance totalling about 900 kilometeres from the Sardar Sarovar Dam at Kevadia in South Gujarat.

(The inter-basin transfer of Waters of the Beas river from the Pong Dam in Himachal Pradesh to Rajasthan for the Indira Gandhi Nahar Pariyojana is another such link)

The release of Narmada waters in Kachchcha district comes days after the Narmada Control Authority granted permission to the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd. (SSNNL) to raise the height of the Dam from 95 to 100 metres. According to a Supreme Court order, the height can be increased by five metres at a stretch when the rehabilitation of project affected people have been implemented fully. The ultimate height of the dam will be 138 metres or 455 feet.

With the present height and another five metres. it would be possible to provide water to the hydro-electric plant as Kevadia for generating power, which will greatly benefit - not Gujarat alone - but Madhya Pradesh too.

It is not merely Kachchcha that is getting Narmada waters in this hot summer. Several towns and hundreds of villages in Saurashtra region too are receiving Narmada waters, thanks to the partial completion of the Narmada main canal and then transferring these waters through a huge network of branch canals and pipelines with the width of more than two metres. (You can drive a Maruti 800 car through these pipelines).

Narendra Modi, under whose leadership the BJP won a thundering victory in the State Assembly elections in December 2002 in now, with the release of Narmada waters in Kachchcha district, becoming a legend, as it were for the five crore Gujaratis.