Mhadei a 30-yr issue, cannot be resolved in a moment: Sawant

Panaji: A day after meeting Union home minister Amit Shah and Union Jal Shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, chief minister Pramod Sawant on Thursday said that the Mhadei water diversion issue cannot be resolved overnight and the state’s fight for Mhadei will continue.
“Mhadei issue has been going on since the past 30 years and will not get over in a moment. It may be a legal fight or a technical one, but the fight will continue,” Sawant said.
“We have met Shekhawat and Shah and placed our demands before them. I am hopeful that no injustice will be done to Goa. We have never stopped. We have started to stop Karnataka through legal and technical ways and we will win the battle,” the CM said.
He said that the government will put up a strong case for Mhadei.
On Wednesday, Sawant led a delegation to Delhi to meet Shah and Shekhawat to press the state’s demand to withdraw the approval granted to the detailed project report (DPR) to divert Mhadei water to Karnataka. The state government also demanded the formation of the Mhadei Water Management Authority to stop illegal diversion of water from the Mhadei basin by Karnataka.
In December 2017, ahead of the Mhadei Water Disputes Tribunal order, in an unprecedented move, then chief minister Manohar Parrikar sent a letter to then BJP’s Karnataka state unit president B S Yeddyurappa stating “in-principle Goa would not oppose reasonable and justified quantum” of drinking water to Karnataka from Mhadei on “humanitarian grounds”.
Parrikar had said drinking water supply was one of the issues pending before the Mhadei Water Disputes Tribunal, but it needs to be discussed bilaterally as suggested by it. When the letter was given to Karnataka, Goa Forward was a coalition partner in the state BJP government. GFP president and Fatorda MLA Vijai Sardesai was a minister and his colleague GFP MLA Vinod Palyekar was WRD minister in the Parrikar cabinet.
In January 2018, Parrikar had said that “sharing of Mhadei waters (with Karnataka) is inevitable” as the river passes through three states and that anyone thinking the contrary is “living in a fool’s paradise”.