Government officials that accompanied the Superintending Engineer of the Water Resources Department who had been nominated by the State to be on the joint committee to inspect the Kalsa-Bhanduri project to determine if water had been diverted, were allegedly abused and threatened by Karnataka officials at the site. Accompanying the Goa team was also environmentalist Rajendra Kerkar who also complained of having received the same treatment. Even more galling was the fact that while the Goa government officials were not allowed to join the inspection team, officials from Karnataka were permitted to join the inspection team, putting Goa at a distinct disadvantage.
And what has Goa done? Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant has condemned the incident, the opposition has done the same. According to the Chief Minister, the visit was official and added that Karnataka’s sinister plans would be exposed following joint inspection. But is that enough? Merely condemning what happened at the inspection site will definitely not suffice. Goa has to officially register a strong protest with the Karnataka government and perhaps even take it further than that. Should such treatment of its officials on a very important mission be acceptable to the State of Goa? And if there are ‘sinister plans’ they should be exposed immediately. Goa cannot and should not wait to bring to light what these plans are.
The diversion of the waters of the River Mhadei is an issue that Herald has repeatedly said cannot be taken lightly. Take what occurred on Friday as an instance. Water Resources Department Chief Engineer Shrikant Patil on Friday night said that he was yet to receive any information from his officers as their mobile phones were unreachable. This is a rather weak response. In a case like this the department head should have been in constant contact with the inspection team at the site. If media persons from Panjim were able to contact those who had accompanied the Superintending Engineer, why wasn’t the Chief Engineer of the department able to do so? For that matter, why has the Water Resources Minister Felipe Neri Rodrigues not taken objection to the incident at Karnataka? He has been extremely silent on the issue.
Goa has never been able to match the determination of Karnataka on the issue of diversion of the waters of the River Mhadei. While in Karnataka the entire political class comes together to defend their government on the river waters, in Goa the opposition takes up the issue and attacks the State government for the latter’s ambiguous stance on the issue. For instance, the Congress has called the condemning of the issue by the Chief Minister as lip service, and the Goa Forward Party claims there is a backdoor deal between the governments of the two states. This is not a new phenomenon, but there are a number of such instances that can be listed out as evidence of politics playing out in the Mhadei issue.
Politics in the case of the River Mhadei have to be kept aside and the entire political establishment has to act as one on it. This is a battle for the waters of the Mhadei and it should not be lost due to partisanship, which is currently very visible and possibly helping Karnataka to further its cause. The cause is bigger than the political games that are played. With elections less than year away it will be tempting for the opposition to hurl barbs at the government, but on Mhadei it should resist and act together. This is for the benefit of the State and the political establishment should give the government all the support required.
