Will Mahadayi Turn The Tide In Favour Of BJP In Karnataka?

On 21 December 2017, Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Karnataka president, B S Yeddyurappa, announced that the Goa government has assured provision of drinking water through the Kalasa Banduri project on the Mahadayi River.

Yeddyurappa’s announcement at the BJP’s massive Parivartana Yatra event at Hubballi, came in the backdrop of a recent flare-up in protests over political inaction on the Mahadayi issue.

The decades-old demand for the Kalasa Banduri project to be completed was intensified by the multi-year drought that affected the state severely overall and the regions of Dharwad, Belagavi, Bagalkot and Gadag, in particular. The drought has left the region bereft of water for agricultural and drinking purposes. Completion of the Kalasa Banduri project would have eased the situation considerably in these districts.

Mahadayi River

Mahadayi River, known as the Mandovi in Goa, is a lifeline for north Karnataka. The river originates and flows for 35km in Karnataka and 52km in Goa. Around 78 per cent of the river’s catchment area is in Goa, where runoff from Maharashtra adds to the volume of the river.

Kalasa and Banduri are the two tributaries of the Mahadayi in north Karnataka.

Early years of the Mahadayi dispute

In 1970, to help the farmers and residents of the four parched districts, the Karnataka government planned to divert water from the Mahadayi to the Malaprabha river basin. Although the projects were not enough to reverse the shortage of water, the Congress government in the state was collecting a betterment levy which evoked public anger. In 1980, residents of Navalgund town staged protests that ended with incidents of police firing. In the aftermath, the then chief minister of Karnataka, Gundu Rao, established a committee with S R Bommai as its head to solve the issue of water shortage.

Bommai, who later became chief minister, tried to solve the issue and entered into a pact with his Goa counterpart, Pratap Singh Rane, under which it was agreed that Karnataka would get 45 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) of water from the Kalasa stream and set up a power generation plant which would benefit Goa as well. Unfortunately, the governments of both Bommai and Rane fell and the pact remained stalled.

Following the stalling of the Bommai-Rane pact, this sensitive issue was left untouched for more than a decade. During this time, Karnataka had Veerendra Patil, S Bangarappa, Veerappa Moily (all from the Congress), H D Deve Gowda and J H Patel (both from the Janata Dal) as chief ministers.

Situation since 2002

In 2002, the Congress government in Karnataka decided to build two barrages on the Kalasa and the Banduri, to supply water to the Hubballi-Dharwad, Badami, Nargund, Ron, Navalgund and Gadag regions. The Vajpayee government even gave the project “in principle approval”, which was not utilised by then water resources minister H K Patil. Five months later, the central government approval was put on hold as the government of Goa approached the union government in September 2002 complaining that the project was going to adversely affect the water needs of Goa and the ecology of the Western Ghats. It also demanded that a tribunal be constituted to look into the dispute.

The S M Krishna government in Karnataka could have proceeded with the project despite the opposition from Goa and the centre as there was no tribunal or Supreme Court order against the same. Instead, it chose to leave the project untouched for the next three years. It took until 2006 for the project to restart when Yeddyurappa, then the state’s finance minister under the JD(S)-BJP coalition government, sanctioned Rs 100 crore for the project despite objections from his coalition partner, H D Kumaraswamy.

However, through the efforts of the government and the subsequently formed BJP government, the Kalasa part of the project, which would ensure the supply of drinking water to the four parched districts of northern Karnataka, was almost completed. However, at that time the Congress government in Goa threw a spanner in the works by approaching the Supreme Court for the creation of a tribunal to settle the issue.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi exacerbated the issue when she openly stated that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will not allow any diversion of Mahadayi in Karnataka in the run-up to the 2007 Goa state elections.

The UPA government, instead of adopting effective steps to take both Goa and Karnataka into confidence and solve the issue, told the Supreme Court that it was impossible to resolve the Mahadayi issue through talks. With this in mind, the Supreme Court ordered the setting up of a tribunal which was ultimately formed on 16 November 2010. Since its inception the tribunal had issued interim orders on not to stop work on the Kalasa-Banduri project, while asking Karnataka to fix the complications till the matter was finally decided by the Supreme Court.

What has the current Congress government in Karnataka done to solve this issue?

The issue came into the limelight again in 2016. This time, the BJP unit of Karnataka made appeals to Chief Minister Siddharamaiah to request the Congress legislators in Goa to assist the Karnataka government in resolving the issue. The BJP legislators offered to do the same with the BJP-led government of Goa. The chief minister, however, chose to politicise the issue by constantly dragging Prime Minister Narendra Modi into it.

Solution reached

For the past three months, the BJP leaders of Karnataka led by Yeddyurappa and Jagadish Shettar appealed to the Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar to take the process of resolution ahead outside of the tribunal. These appeals bore fruit on 21 December, when Parrikar wrote a letter to Yeddyurappa that his government would not object to a drinking water project on humanitarian grounds.

This was a matter of jubilation for the residents of the four affected districts as evidenced by the thunderous cheers that Parrikar’s letter evinced from the one lakh people gathered at the BJP’s mega rally at Hubballi.

Attached below is the letter by Parrikar, in verbatim.

Why such a big deal

Yeddyurappa’s efforts should be lauded for two reasons. First, the long and difficult history of the dispute, and the political reality of the current BJP government in Goa, made it very unlikely that a quick resolution would be reached. The Goa chief minister’s in-principle assurance to allow a drinking water project is a major step in the resolution process.

Second, the Mahadayi issue is a major poll plank in the region and has the potential to significantly affect the political fortunes of the major parties in this region. In fact, N H Konaraddi, the Janata Dal (Secular) Member of Legislative Assembly from Navalgund, fought and won the 2013 elections on this issue.

This important drinking water project would directly impact 25 assembly constituencies, across 11 taluks in north Karnataka, covering Hubballi-Dharwad, Gadag, Bagalkot and some part of Belagavi districts. These areas have witnessed unrest due to the consistent bouts of drought and the project will come as a boon to the residents.

If this move by Yeddyurappa bears fruit, it may give the BJP an edge in its attempts to win the support of voters in north Karnataka as it will make the Congress government look weak for its failure to resolve the row. Besides the Congress, the JD(S) will also be affected, specifically the electoral fortunes of its Navalgund legislator Kona Reddy, who had been asking for the resolution of the Mahadayi issue for a long time now. The BJP’s move will also dent the image of JD(S) as the party of the agrarian populace since the Mahadayi issue involves the farmers of the region as well.

The Congress response

Initially, Siddaramaiah stated that he would welcome any initiative taken by Yeddyurappa to solve the issue. But, once Parrikar’s letter of promise came, however, the Karnataka Chief Minister and his Water Resources Minister M B Patil downplayed the Goa government’s promise as a political stunt and questioned Yeddyurappa’s locus standi in the issue.

Second, the Congress in Goa is vehemently opposing this move. This is what Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco, a Congress MLA from Curtorim, Goa said:

“The stand taken by Goa's Chief Minister that in principle Goa would not oppose reasonable and justified quantum of drinking water to Karnataka from the Mhadei river on humanitarian ground is indeed unrealistic and will prove harmful for the state of Goa's claims put before the tribunal…”

Siddaramaiah has deliberately ignored this facet of the issue. Instead of talking to the Congress legislators in Goa, he has written another letter to Parrikar.

While the resolution of the Mahadayi issue now seems possible only next year after the elections, the possibilities of the former will affect the latter. Additionally, who becomes the next chief minister will, in turn, decide how exactly a resolution could be reached, or if a resolution is even possible in the near future.