Union Minister for Water Resource, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Uma Bharti has said that Inter-Linking of Rivers (ILR) has to be taken up on mission mode. In a review meeting of the various programmes and schemes of her Ministry held here, the Minister said that two teams of senior officials of the Ministry will visit Bhubaneswar and Hyderabad this week to discus inter-linking of rivers with the State of Governments of Odisha and Telangana. The Minister stressed the need for separate Special Project Vehicle (SPV) for every ILR scheme. The Minister also directed the officials to find out reservations, if any, of the State governments regarding this programme and ways to sort them out.
Regarding Mission Ganga Sushri Bharti said that National Institute of Hydrology (NIH) will be the lead agency to provide all kind of information regarding Ganga conservation. NIH is a research institution under the Ministry and is located at Roorkee in Uttarakhand. The Minister underlined the need for complete revamp of Flood Management Programme of the Ministry so that it could provide real benefit to the flood effected people. It was felt that due to various short comings the scheme has not been able to provide desired benefit to these people.
Referring to the inter-State disputes regarding water resources, the Minister said that setting up of a committee in the Ministry to solve these disputes should be explored. Sushri Bharti directed Ministry officials to go for speedy digitization of various schemes and programmes of the Ministry. She said implementation status of these programmes should be put on website. This will help the concerned states to find out the status of their various proposals sent to the Ministry and will also provide transparency to the various schemes and programmes of the Ministry, the Minister added.