Water should be made available to all people: Soz

New Delhi, June 28 (UNI) Union Minister for Water Resources Saifuddin Soz today favoured resolving the water sharing disputes among the states through consensus and said it would be the government's endeavour to implement water projects expeditiously to ensure that the gift of nature was made available to all people in the country.

Addressing the Special General Meeting of the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) Society, here he said that acting on the tripartite Memorandum of Understanding for the preparation of Detailed Project Report on the Ken-Betwa Link, signed in August 2005, the NWDA had initiated action to prepare the report.

He said efforts were made by his Ministry and Central Water Commission and the NWDA to bring about consensus for taking up the DPR for Par-Tapi-Narmada and Damanganga-Pinjal Links involving the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat and also for Polavaram-Vijayawada link of Godavari and Krishna rivers involving Orissa, Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka.

The NWDA Society also approved certain modification to the functioning of the NWDA to include the works to identify and prepare pre-feasibility reports of Intra-state links as proposed by the states and preparation of DPR on river link proposals. The Ministers of Irrigation and Water Resources from Asom, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal attended the meeting besides the senior irrigation officials of the States and Central Governments.

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