Polavaram Issue: No Further Study Of Godavari Backwater, Centre Tells SC

New Delhi: The Centre on Friday told the Supreme Court that there is no requirement of further study of the backwaters of the Godavari river.

In response to the directive of the apex court on Thursday to submit a report on the capacity of the Polavaram reservoir and provide details on the volume of the backwaters of the Godavari river. The Andhra Pradesh government had raised the volume of Godavari water in the Polavaram dam reservoir. The Centre said since the Gopalkrishna Committee had conducted the backwaters study and submitted its report to the Centre in 2011, there is no need for further study of the backwaters of the river.

The apex court later fixed a final hearing on the matter for October 15.

The SC on Thursday had asked the Centre whether it had made any impact study that if the reservoir received an extra 50 lakh cusecs of floodwater, what would be its impact on Odisha, Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. It further asked the Centre whether it had prepared a report in this connection, and if not, it should get it prepared by a Pune-based central agency.

The directive of the apex court had come after hearing a petition by the Odisha government.

The Odisha government had argued whether a project can be implemented without environment clearance. It urged the apex court to direct the Centre to give a clarification on whether the project has been given a valid environment clearance as the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) had been keeping the ‘stop work order’ in abeyance time and again in favour of the Andhra Pradesh government.

Notably, the Supreme Court, on August 2, had issued notices to the Centre and the Andhra Pradesh government over environmental clearances for the Polavaram project.

Going through the content of the petition filed by the Odisha government in its third petition, a division bench of the apex court comprising Justice Madan B. Lokur and Dipak Gupta directed the Centre and the Andhra Pradesh to file their counter within three weeks.

In the earlier petition, the state government had alleged that the construction work on the Polavaram irrigation project was in violation of the Godavari Water Dispute Tribunal Award.

Earlier in June, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in a letter to the Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Harsh Vardhan had drawn his attention to environmental clearance for Polavaram by the MoEF.

He had pointed out that the Odisha government was not informed on the ‘stop work order’ kept in abeyance by the ministry.

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It further asked the Centre whether it had prepared a report in this connection, and if not, it should get it prepared by a Pune-based central agency and submit it on September 5.

Please ask Mr Mishra about this. I think the date should be October 15.