BHUBANESWAR: WITH two days remaining for the completion of one year of Odisha Government filing statutory complaint on Mahanadi river water dispute with Chhattisgarh, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday sought the intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for formation of a tribunal for its early adjudication.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, the Chief Minister said, “I would like to emphasise here that the timeline of one year for constitution of the tribunal for adjucating the Mahanadi water dispute under Section 4(1) of the Inter-State River Water Dispute Act, 1956 is getting over on November 18, 2017. However, the Union Government has not yet constituted the tribunal despite my repeated requests over the last one year.”
This is the second letter of the Chief Minister to the Prime Minister in the last 10 days on the issue. He had written to the Prime Minister on November 7, 2017 requesting him for issuing a notification for constituting a tribunal for early initiation of the process of adjudication of the Mahanadi dispute.
The Chief Minister drew the attention of the Prime Minister to the provision in Section 4(1) of the ISRWD Act, 1956 which mandates that if the Centre is of the opinion that the water dispute cannot be solved through negotiations, it will constitute a tribunal within a period not exceeding one year from the date of receipt of the such request by notification in the official gazette.
“Therefore, the Central Government is supposed to constitute the tribunal before November 19, 2017 as my Government had filed the statutory complaint on November 19, 2016,” he said.In his November 7 letter to the Prime Minister, Naveen had said that the Additional Solicitor General appearing for the Union of India in original suit No.1 of 2017 (filed by the State of Odisha) had apprised the Supreme Court on May 2, 2017 of the Union Ministry of Water Resources preparing a note for the decision of the Cabinet on constitution of a tribunal. Wasim A Qadri, counsel appearing for the Centre, had also stated that a decision will be taken for issuing a notification by November 19, 2017, he said.
“In the above circumstances, I would earnestly seek your personal intervention in the matter for issuing appropriate directives for constituting the tribunal within the stipulated timeline for early adjudication of the concerns of the people of my State,” Naveen said.