The Centre has decided to put the onus on state governments for ensuring safety and maintenance of dams across the country. The Union Cabinet today approved a draft legislation on dam safety measures that was earlier circulated to all states.
The proposed legislation will help states adopt uniform dam safety procedures and ensure surveillance, inspection, operation and maintenance of dams of certain parameters (called specified dams) to ensure their safe functioning.
“So far, there is no monitoring mechanism for ensuring dam safety. The Dam Safety Organisation, set up by the Union ministry of water resources, performs more of a coordinating and advisory role for the states. The legislation will help in enforcing certain measures and ensure more accountability from supervising personnel,” said chairman, central water commission (CWC), A K Bajaj.
Even though this is a state subject, under Article 252 of the Constitution, the Parliament can legislate on such a subject, provided two or more states give consent to such a legislation that is adopted by their respective legislatures.
In this case, the Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly adopted a resolution in March 2007 that dam safety legislation should be regulated by an Act of Parliament. The West Bengal legislative assembly too passed a similar resolution in July 2007 empowering Parliament to pass a Dam Safety Act. Following the Cabinet decision today, the Dam Safety Bill, 2010, will be introduced in Parliament.
“India has 4,300 large dams that provide water storage of only 90 to 95 days,” said Bajaj. The US has water storage capacity for managing about two years of consecutive droughts and Russia can manage up to three years, he said.
Moreover, a fair number of India’s dams are over 100 years old. A list compiled by the CWC shows at least 114 dams in this category. Since 1917, 29 dams have reportedly been damaged. The last one was in 2002, when the Jamunia dam in Madhya Pradesh breached.
The proposed legislation addresses the need for periodical inspections, instrumentations and establishment of hydrological and seismological stations. It lists measures for disaster management, emergency action plan and requirements of comprehensive dam-safety evaluation.
For the first time, it seeks to puts the responsibility on the central government, state governments and owners of dams to set up an institutional mechanism for ensuring safety of such dams and reporting the action taken.
It defines the duties and functions of these institutions in relation to perpetual surveillance, routine inspections, operation and maintenance of log books, instructions, funds for maintenance and repairs, technical documentation, reporting, qualifications and trainings of concerned manpower.
