Plan to link rivers dropped

New Delhi, Dec. 2: The government on Wednesday told Parliament that it has dropped the plan to interlink the country’s Himalayan and peninsular rivers, saying it entails an expenditure of Rs 4.4 lakh crore, which the government could not afford.

However, the water resources minister, Mr Pawan Kumar Bansal, said in the Lok Sabha that the government will pursue the interlinking of peninsular rivers as well as that of Himalayan rivers separately.

He, however, said the formalities for declaring the Polavaram multi-purpose project on the Godavari river in Andhra Pradesh as a national project will be completed soon and a Cabinet note is ready.

It was during the rule of the BJP-led NDA government that the proposal to interlink rivers got a push. It had even constituted a high-level task force headed by former Central minister Suresh Prabhu to look into the issue. However, not much seems to have happened during the rule of UPA-I and even UPA-II on this front.