CHANDIGARH: With the chief ministers of six neighbouring states joining hands for signing an MoU in the presence of Union minister for water resources
Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday, the issue of Lakhwar dam on the Yamuna in Uttrakhand is likely to see the light of the day now after getting delayed for decades.
The development comes at a time when opposition parties have trained the guns on Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government in Haryana over the issue of SYL canal.
Besides
Khattar, other CMs who will sign the MoU include Rajasthan’s Vasundhara Raje
Scindia,
Trivendra Singh Rawat of Uttarakhand, Yogi Adityanath of Uttar Pradesh,
Jai Ram Thakur of Himachal Pradesh and Arvind Kejriwal of Delhi.
The proposed Rs 3,966.50 crore project will come up at Lohari village of Dehradun and will provide 2.67 lakh million acre-foot (MAF) water, besides having a 300MW power generation capacity. Besides water needs, the dam will also help address the the electricity issue.
Haryana CM’s media adviser Rajiv Jain said soon after coming to Prime Minister
Narendra Modi had announced to start work on this project.
“Consequently, the Union minister took an initiative and brought CMs of all six beneficiary states on a common platform to finalize the modalities for starting the project. This issue has been hanging fire for at least three decades as all parties were busy playing politics only. But we have made it practically possible,” Jain maintained.
In 1976, the Planning Commission had approved the setting up of the dam at Lohari village at 204m height. Consequently, in 1986 the work on construction of dam had begun but was stopped due to paucity of funds.
Following this, in 1994, the six states had met again and signed an MoU for distribution of water and electricity from this project.
“This project is popularly known as Upper Yamuna project. It was in February this year when all formalities were completed and the clearances had been obtained. Now, the chief ministers have consented to sign the final MoU to resume the project,” said Jain.
After SYL, this is the second such project which has been declared national project, he added.
