"The Committee is at loss to find that two of our National Waterways No 4 and 5 are pending for the last five years to be operationalised mainly due to lack of funds.
"The Government has brought a Bill for yet another waterway. It raises genuine apprehensions about the operationalisation of this waterway," the Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture said in a report.
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The National Waterway (Lakhipur-Bhanga stretch of the Barak River) Bill, 2013 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on March 22 to declare the Barak river stretch as the sixth National Waterway and was referred to the Committee, headed by Sitaram Yechury for examination.
The Committee, however, said that Parliament had passed the law to create Kakinada-Puducherry canals with rivers Godavari and Krishna as National Waterway No 4 and the East Coast Canal with Brahmani river and Mahanadi delta rivers as National Waterway No 5 in 2008. However, the projects are yet to be operationalised.
At the same time the panel was of the view that if operationalised, lots of time and resources, which are wasted in transporting oversized cargo to the North-East, would be saved.
Recommending extending the Waterways to Chittagong to provide a hassle-free movement of such cargo, it said, "To have a water protocol with Bangladesh would open immense possibility of cargo movement from India particularly from North Eastern region."
The Committee said it is also "surprised to see that that even though the Committee had submitted its Report on the previous Bill on March 4 2008, the Ministry of Shipping has taken more than 5 years to bring back the same Bill before Parliament".
It said during this period, there has been an escalation of about 34% in the project cost.
Expressing "anguish over this inexplicable delay", the Committee said it hopes that the Shipping Ministry will give development of waterways the priority it deserves.
The Bill aims at unified development of waterways for shipping, navigation and transportation of cargo to the north-eastern region and upon enactment would particularly benefit Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh by facilitating cargo movement there.
The report said the regulation and development of the proposed waterway "is in the public interest" and would provide "safe, convenient and sustained shipping."
As per estimates, traffic to the tune of 12.45 lakh tonnes is likely to be carried on the proposed waterways after its full development by 2018-19.
"The traffic is expected to be handled at four terminals, namely Lakhipur, Karimganj, Silchar and Badarpur," the financial memorandum in the Bill said.
Work on the stretch includes channel making, construction of tunnels, transit sheds and installation of handling equipment, it added.
"The expenditure in respect of the said development will be of the order of Rs 123.30 crore at 2012 prices. This expenditure will be of a non-recurring nature," it said.
Besides, it said that an expenditure of Rs 3.6 crore per annum would be incurred for maintenance of navigation aids, terminals and dredging.
The projects is to be implemented in two phases by Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) set up under IWAI Act, 1985.