Panel raises doubts over initiation of Assam Waterways

A Parliamentary panel has raised doubts over the Government’s ability to operationalise Barak river’s 121-km stretch in Assam as National Waterway, citing that two such projects had been already pending for over five years due to fund crunch.

“The Committee is at a loss to find that two of our National Waterways No 4 and 5 are pending for the last five years to be operationalised mainly due to lack of funds,” the Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture said in its report tabled in Parliament on Wednesday.

“The Government has brought a Bill for yet another waterway. It raises genuine apprehensions about the operationalisation of this waterway,” it added.

The National Waterway (Lakhipur-Bhanga stretch of the Barak River) Bill, 2013 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on March 22 to declare it as the sixth such project.

It was referred to the Committee, headed by Sitaram Yechury, for examination.

The Committee noted, however, that Parliament had passed the law to create Kakinada-Puducherry canals with rivers Godavari and Krishna as National Waterway No 4 and the East Coast Canal with Brahmani river and Mahanadi delta rivers as National Waterway No 5 in 2008. However, these projects are yet to be operationalised.

The panel is of the view that if operationalised, lots of time and resources wasted in transporting oversized cargo to the north-east would be saved.

Recommending extending the waterways to Chittagong to provide a hassle-free movement of such cargo, it said that to “have a water protocol with Bangladesh would open immense possibility of cargo movement from India particularly from North Eastern region”.

The panel said it was “surprised to see that even though the Committee had submitted its report on the previous Bill on March 4, 2008, the Ministry of Shipping has taken more than 5 years to bring back the same Bill before Parliament”.

It said during this period, there was an escalation of about 34 per cent in the project cost.

Expressing “anguish over this inexplicable delay”, the Committee said it hoped that the Shipping Ministry would ill give development of waterways the priority it deserves.

The Bill aims at unified development of waterways for shipping, navigation and transportation of cargo to the north-eastern region and upon enactment would particularly benefit Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh by facilitating cargo movement there.