Water war between Chhattisgarh and Odisha gets political overtones

The Chhattisgarh govt had proposed to construct over a dozen barrages on Mahanadi, which spurred Odisha CM to write to PM Modi to intervene

The Mahanadi water sharing dispute simmering between Chhattisgarh and Odisha has started assuming political overtones.

“It would have been better had the Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik spoke to me before writing a letter to the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi),” Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh said, referring to Patnaik's letter to the PM seeking the central government's intervention to halt plans for barrage construction. 

The Chhattisgarh government had proposed constructing more than a dozen barrages on the Mahanadi. The Odisha government's fear was that such projects would hamper water flow into the Hirakund dam build on the river that originates in Chhattisgarh’s Dhamtari district.

“The barrages had been proposed to check the flood water that flow to sea without any utilisation and not the natural flow,” Chhattisgarh’s water resources minister Brijmohan Agrawal clarified. 

The state government was constructing 13 barrages across the Mahanadi river. The projects were aimed to ensure water supply to the industries and irrigation. “All these projects are having less than 2,000 hectares potential and fall under the category of Minor Irrigation Projects, which does not need any clearance from the Central Water Commission (CWC),” Agrawal added.

According to Singh, “The utilisation of Mahanadi water by state (Chhattisgarh) is only 25% of the available water in the river.” Mahanadi and its tributaries have a total drainage area of 53.90% from Chhattisgarh, 45.73% from Odisha and 0.35% from other states. 

A two-member team from Odisha will visit Chhattisgarh on July 25 to assess the situation. 

The ruling party in Odisha had opposed Singh’s statement, and raised the issue in and outside the Parliament to get national attention.