JAIPUR: Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot on Monday took a swipe at Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, saying the state’s Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project (ERCP) deserved to be accorded the status of a national project but the minister, who hails from the desert state, wasn’t doing anything to convince the Centre.
Gehlot’s tweet attack on Shekhawat on Mondy was a follow-up to his attacks on the Centre and the union minister a day earlier. On Sunday, Gehlot underlined that the Congress-led state government continued to work on ERCP, which was started by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Vasundhara Raje, and stressed that it was high time the Centre accords national project status to the canal.
The project aims to harvest surplus water, available during the rainy season in rivers in southern Rajasthan such as Chambal and its tributaries including Kunnu, Parvati, Kalisindh, and use it in 13 south-eastern districts of the state where there is a scarcity of water for drinking and irrigation.
In a string of tweets on Monday, Gehlot wondered if a water project in a desert state did not qualify for a national project tag, what kind of a project would.
“PM Modi had earlier said to make ERCP (canal project) a national project but now, they are not accepting it. Ask our Union minister (Gajendra Singh Shekhawat) from Jodhpur what kind of minister he is if he can’t convince PM for a project of his state.”
Former BJP minister Arun Chaturvedi accused the chief minister of making false claims. “The PM never gave his approval to the project but assured of a positive approach as the issue was with the technical committee at the time,” he said, hitting back at Gehlot for doing politics over the project.
Chaturvedi said the chief minister or the public health engineering minister Mahesh Joshi, who has threatened to launch an agitation to demand national project status, never attended the meeting on ERCP and the project needs approval from other states which hasn’t come in yet. “The Rajasthan government is just doing politics over it,” he said.
The project was conceived during the previous Vasundhara Raje-led government. In June 2018, The Central Water Commission gave hydrological clearance to Rajasthan’s ERCP, which is the first proposed state project on interlinking of rivers.
In the recently presented state budget, Gehlot made an allocation of ₹9,600 crore for ERCP. He stated that the Centre hasn’t accorded national status to the project but the state government will continue working on it with own resources. In February this year, the Gehlot government set up the ERCP Corporation to execute the project.
