New Year for Goa has begun with lots of political fireworks that have been lit by Kannadigas, mind you not migrants living in the coastal State.
Karnataka has shown the political might it carries in front of a small state, Goa, as the ‘double-engine’ sarkar decided to carry the wagons of the larger state to the polling station.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led government at the Centre under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sided with the Southern State and quiet rightly sought to gain on the ‘jal shakti’ (power of water) during the upcoming Karnataka Assembly election which are due in May 2023 with the Central Water Commission (CWC) granting approval to a revised Detailed Project Report (DPR) for Kalasa-Bandura water diversion project.
The BJP will leave no stone unturned to ensure that the Karnataka Assembly elections are won by the party with a thumping majority, paving the way for a possible one-sided battle during the Parliament elections that will follow in early 2024. It is clear that the Centre has preferred to let Goa and Goans run helter-skelter for resolutions while the ‘double-engine’ will woo voters in Karnataka.
Goa which has been admired for ease of governance due to its small size is paying the political price for the same reason, size. Karnataka will elect 28 Members of Parliament (MPs) to the Lok Sabha in 2024, whereas Goa’s strength in the Lok Sabha is only 2 MPs. Karnataka’s strength in the Rajya Sabha is 12 and Goa has a sole representative. The weighing scale is lopsided in favour of Karnataka and therefore there cannot be an iota of doubt about the BJP or Centre’s preference.
However, the sorry state of affairs is that despite having delivered a brute majority of 33 MLAs in the Goa Legislative Assembly with a total strength of 40, the Goa Government led by Pramod Sawant is unable to impress upon his political high command the devastating effects that the diversion of water from Mhadei will have on the tiny State.
On Monday, the Opposition MLAs showing unity boycotted the CM’s all party MLAs’ meeting accusing the Chief Minister of “conniving” with Centre and Karnataka to divert Mhadei River water. The Opposition MLAs punctured the CM’s strategy to lead an all party delegation, once again, to parade before the Prime Minister and other Central ministers.
To recall, in November 2019, similarly when an all party delegation met then Union Minister Prakash Javadekar, he had assured that the project permissions will be kept in abeyance. And a month later the same Javadekar in a letter to the Karnataka CM had informed that the Kalasa- Bandura project does not need an Environment Clearance.
CM Sawant has now reiterated that the approvals granted to the revised DPR are subject to several clearances and permissions from various departments of the Union government. Can Goa’s Chief Minister claim that a similar fate will not repeat and in order to ensure that the project carries on the Central agencies will not grant approvals and permissions?
Sawant has time and again reiterated that Goa’s position is strong and the State will win the case in the Supreme Court. However, he is missing on an important fact; Karnataka in 2017 had submitted to the Apex Court that no construction is being carried out at the site. Subsequently, by admission of Sawant’s former cabinet colleague and then Water Resources Minister Felipe Neri Rodrigues that construction works undertaken by the neighbouring State have resulted in the ‘natural diversion’ of Mhadei river water to the Malaprabha basin.
It is high time, the Chief Minister and the BJP take an honest-to-goodness stand on the Mhadei issue. Goa’s future is at stake and in order to gain political brownies the Centre should not be allowed to play with the resource that the State is totally dependent upon.
If Mhadei is diverted, the State will not just face scarcity of drinking water but the cascading effect on everything else will spell a doom for Goa. From agriculture to tourism, every sector that one can literally imagine will devastate.
Goans have lived through the tuff times of closure of mining activities; however, diversion of Mhadei will mean the blockage of State’s heart which has been the providing livelihood to Goans.
