inflow in Ranjit Sagar dam to be hit as Jammu prepares to take water from Ravi river. Punjab silent

Survey begins for project to divert Ravi waters
Jupinderjit Singh
Tribune News Service

Jammu, October 14
Days after refusing to give land to Punjab for the Shahpur Kandi project, the Jammu and Kashmir Government has started a survey for a project to divert the Ravi waters before the Ranjit Sagar Dam for filling the incomplete Ravi Canal.

The canal will take water to the ‘parched’ Kandi belt in Kathua, Samba and Jammu districts. In what amounts to asserting its rights over the Ravi, which Punjab claims as its own, the state government started a geological survey yesterday to create a link between the Ravi and the Ravi Canal.

Taj Mohi-ud-Din, Minister for Irrigation and Public Helath Engineering, told The Tribune that the survey report to construct the link through tunnels and an open channel to take water from the Ravi began yesterday with geologists and other experts of WAPCOS company initiating it.

“It is a happy day as well as a sad day for me. The scheme of taking water from the Ravi was conceived in the 1970s, but as the Punjab Government kept changing the proposals and did not fulfil any promise to us, our agriculture fields in the Kandi belt remained dependent on rain and suffered drought often,” the minister said.

He said as Punjab had “unilaterally” terminated all water sharing agreements with other states, it had no locus standi to stop us from using the Ravi waters. “While in the earlier project water had to be lifted from the Ranjit Sagar Dam, now it would flow to Vijaypur with natural gravity, as we would lift water from the river upstream only.”

The government plans to generate power from the water by creating “falls” on the way. The canal, with an original stretch of 82 km from Vijaypur near Jammu to the Ravi, was till date completed till Basantpur village, near Lakhanpur, a stretch of 79 km. It was originally planned to go up to the river but the plan had to be revised after the Punjab Government proposed the Shahpur Kandi project in the 1970s.

Under the Shahpur Kandi project, it promised water for the Ravi Canal from the dam lake. As the Shahpur Kandi project never took off, the state government waited for water all these years with agriculture in the Kandi belt suffering badly. Meanwhile, in an agreement with the Punjab Government, the state government started lifting water from the Ravi from downstream the Ranjit Sagar Dam (known as Thein Dam earlier). This did not prove helpful in feeding the Ravi Canal, as very less quantity of water was released from the dam. There was rarely enough water to be ‘lifted’ for feeding the Ravi Canal.

Irrigation Department sources claimed the state always had rights over the left banks of the Ravi and Punjab on the right banks. “They can’t question us using this side of the river.”

They said it was not their problem that the inflow to the dam may decrease and eventually the power generation capacity would be hit. The state government, in fact, planned to generate more than 20 MW from the new ‘link’ they would be making between the river and the canal.

(published in The Tribune, dated oct 15, 2010)