Cabinet defers decision on Ken-Betwa interlinking project

Government today deferred a decision to give a go-ahead to the Ken-Betwa river interlinking project and asked three Cabinet ministers to discuss the issue and get back to the Cabinet.
Sources said while deferring the issue, the Union Cabinet decided that Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Law Minister Kapil Sibal and Water Resources Minister Harish Rawat should sit together and look into the issue, including a Supreme Court decision to quash a petition seeking a review of its order directing the government to "forthwith" constitute a committee for interlinking of rivers.
"Filing a curative petition could be one of the options before the three ministers," said a senior government functionary.

In 2012, the Supreme Court had dismissed a petition seeking a review of its order directing the government to "forthwith" constitute a committee for interlinking of rivers.
The review petition was filed by the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) and said the court order could be interpreted as judicial overreach.
"We have gone through the review petition and the relevant documents. There is delay in filing the review petition. In our opinion, no case for review of our order is made out both on the grounds of delay as well as on merits and, accordingly, the review petition is dismissed," the bench had said in its order.

The bench had in its February judgement directed the Centre to appoint a high-powered committee comprising representatives of various government departments, ministries, experts and social activists to chart out and execute the project.

The differences between Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh on the Ken-Betwa inter-linking issue were hammered out by the Union Water Resources Ministry recently.
Ken Betwa Link Project proposes to divert the surplus waters of river Ken through Ken-Betwa link canal to river Betwa for meeting water requirements in the water deficit Betwa basin.
The proposal includes construction of a dam across the Ken river for storing and transferring of the waters through a link canal from Ken river to Betwa river.

The river interlinking project was the brainchild of the NDA government.