Mahanadi water dispute: Odisha, C’garh brace for Sept 17 meeting

“Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik will attend the September 17 Delhi meeting with all facts and figures on Mahanadi dispute,” Spokesman for the Chief Minister Sukanta Kumar Panda told Millennium Post. 

Patnaik also chaired a high level meeting on Monday to discuss with officials about various issues pertaining to Mahanadi water dispute with Chhattisgarh and drafted a strategy to protect the interest of the state. Odisha has taken ‘seriously’ the issue of construction of scores of barrages and anicuts by Chhattisgarh at the upstream of Mahanadi, as it is the lifeline of Odisha and for both irrigation and drinking water a vast area of the state is depending upon the river, he said.

The September 17 Delhi meeting would be chaired by Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti, who has invited Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Dr Raman Singh and Patnaik to iron out differences over the issue.

Both the neighbouring states are locked in a duel for the last four decades over sharing of water from Mahanadi. To resolve the protracted dispute, on April 28, 1983 the then undivided Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Arjun Singh and his Orissa counterpart Janaki Ballav Pattanaik signed an agreement to constitute a ‘board’ to look into survey, water sharing and other related issues of Mahanadi. But that never happened and the issue was remained untouched and unresolved.

Mahanadi is originated from Dhamtari district and has a catchment of 82,432 sq km or its 86 per cent area in Chhattisgarh and last month Patnaik fired a salvo accusing the BJP government of deliberately storing or diverting Mahanadi water by constructing several barrages and anicuts over the river and its tributaries.

At a Centre brokered Chief Secretary level meeting in Delhi, it was decided that both the states would share all important data of Mahanadi water but interestingly they accused each other of not cooperating on the issue and furnishing incomplete information.

After Odisha alleged incomplete data, CM Singh said “Chhattisgarh has already provided relevant data to Bhubaneswar on the proforma fixed by the Centre. But despite several reminders Odisha has not yet provided any information so far on the issue”.

“Hirakud Dam was constructed in 1957 on Mahanadi and it is irrelevant to raise the issue of Hirakud reservoir and Mahanadi water sharing by Odisha after 59 years,” he said indicating that his BJP government was not in a mood to give any more space to Odisha on the issue.

Chhattisgarh also clarified that the barrages, constructed on river Mahanadi, would not affect the water intake of Hirakud dam as the barrages are meant for checking rain water and not having any diversion bear to check the normal flow. “Mahanadi water can fill seven such Hirakud reservoirs as Mahanadi carries average 40,773 MCM water, where as the Hirakud dam has a capacity of only 5400 MCM capacity,” it added.

Chhattisgarh Water Resources Minister Brij Mohan Agrawal also said his government does not want to hide anything, although “BJD is playing politics over the issue”.