Sheonath River: A river in corporate custody

'Living entity' in Chhattisgarh was sold to a private company

Even as river has been granted “human rights” with its declaration as “living entity” by the Uttarakhand court of law, Sheonath River in Chhattisgarh has been in “captivity” of a corporate house for the last two decades.

The erstwhile undivided Madhya Pradesh government in October 1998 inked a deal and sold a 23-km stretch of the Sheonath River to Radius Water Limited (RWL). This was country’s first experiment with privatisation of rivers that was widely criticised for its ecological and social damages.

According to the deal, RWL was given a concession to build a barrage across Sheonath for supplying up to 40 million litres (mld) of water per day to the Borai industrial estate in Durg district. The contract has been for a period of 22 years.

The selling of River drew strong protest from the green activists. The ferocity of the protests forced the then chief minister Ajit Jogi to announce the “abrogation of the RWL contract” in April 2003. However, he failed to keep his promise.

The issue later came up in the Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly. “Despite the House committee recommendation to free the River and cancel the agreement, no action had been taken,” Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan convenor Alok Shukla, who was associated with the movement to free the River, said.

The state legislative assembly’s public accounts committee (PAC) tabled the report on March 16, 2007 recommending the state government to scrap the deal and initiate criminal action against RWL, and the government officials concerned. Even as a decade had passed, the state government remained a mute spectator to follow the recommendation.

Chhattisgarh’s industry minister Amar Agrawal refused to comment why the PAC recommendation was not followed to free Sheonath.

The villagers of Mahamara, an affected village in Durg district, had been in distress as their life-line had been in “custody”. After the river passed onto the hands of a private company, the villagers have been denied water for drinking, washing and irrigation besides banning fishermen from casting their nets and prevented locals from taking sand from the riverbed.

With the debate on over Rivers becoming living entity, villagers want Sheonath to be freed at the earliest. Even for the government, the project is no viable deal.

Though the officials refused to reveal the figure, the state government is paying a hefty amount as compensation to the RWL according to agreement as the water requirement in Boria industrial area had come down.