Hyderabad: The TS government has found fault with the Central Water Commission for delaying approvals for irrigation projects and said that this is resulting in huge escalation of project costs.
The Centre on Monday held a meeting with irrigation officials of all states to review functioning of the CWC. Irrigation advisor to the TS government R. Vidyasagar Rao, who attended the meeting, said the CWC was seeking 17 kinds of permissions to grant approvals for construction of projects. This was delaying projects by years.
He suggested the Centre to re-form the CWC to achieve the desired results in the irrigation sector. Mr Rao said the CWC should insist on permissions and approvals only in case of inter-state projects.
He said states such as TS, AP, Maharashtra and Punjab were trying to resolve inter-state disputes in irrigation and CWC should assist them for speedy execution of projects instead of delaying approvals under one pretext or the other.
The meeting was held by Union Cabinet secretary V.K. Sinha in New Delhi, who assured to take up the issues raised by the states to the notice of the Central government and make CWC more effective.
