A payment fight over the Sardar Sarovar dam that ran for more than three decades cleared its last formal step on Tuesday, October 27. At the 15th meeting of the Review Committee of the Narmada Control Authority in New Delhi, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan approved the agreement their chief ministers signed in July. Union Jal Shakti Minister C R Paatil chaired the meeting. Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel attended in person, and the other three chief ministers joined by video, DeshGujarat and IANS (via Punjab Kesari) reported.
The ratification itself adds no new numbers. Those came in July, and they show that Gujarat paid for the peace.
From Rs 7,900 crore owed to a few hundred crore
In February, Gujarat’s government said its three partner states owed it more than Rs 7,900 crore towards shared project costs, with Madhya Pradesh alone accounting for Rs 5,516.50 crore, Devdiscourse reported.
The one-time settlement signed on July 7 in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah rewrote those numbers. According to the Free Press Journal, the states redrew their shares of rehabilitation spending:
- Gujarat: up from 50.57% to 75%
- Madhya Pradesh: down from 31.98% to 16.17%
- Maharashtra: down from 15.15% to 7.76%
- Rajasthan: down from 2.31% to 1.17%
The Gujarat share of 75% also appears in Drishti’s summary of the agreement, which says the deal covers rehabilitation spending, cost sharing for the Sardar Sarovar and Indira Sagar projects, and interest on construction-era borrowing.
Under the new split, Madhya Pradesh pays Gujarat Rs 231.80 crore for rehabilitation, the Free Press Journal reported. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said his state now owes Rs 27 crore, where claims of Rs 2,000 to 3,000 crore had been raised earlier, ANI reported (via Asianet Newsable). Reports have not given a figure for Rajasthan.
What Madhya Pradesh dropped in return
Madhya Pradesh had its own claim of Rs 7,669 crore against Gujarat, and it gave that up under the deal, according to the Free Press Journal and National Herald. The two states had large counter-claims on each other, and both wrote them down. Congress leaders in Madhya Pradesh have accused their state government of giving ground to Gujarat.
Madhya Pradesh holds most of the dam’s submergence area, and the Free Press Journal reported that the state will finish its pending rehabilitation work on its own.
Ukai water for Maharashtra
The settlement also touches south Gujarat. Maharashtra’s 10 TMC entitlement under the 1979 tribunal award never reached it because of the terrain. Fadnavis said in July that half will now come through a proposed Narmada-Tapi diversion and half will be lifted from the Ukai dam in the monsoon, when the reservoir is full, Telangana Today reported. Both are in-principle approvals. Maharashtra is still drawing up the lifting plan, and farmers in Surat and Tapi districts who depend on Ukai releases will want to see the monsoon-only condition written into it.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajanlal Sharma said his state is preparing a project report to store surplus Narmada monsoon water, and that sprinklers are compulsory across the Narmada command area in Jalore and Barmer, ANI reported (via Asianet Newsable).
For Gujarat taxpayers, the deal turns a large receivable that partners never paid into a smaller one they have agreed to pay, plus a bigger share of future rehabilitation costs on the state’s own books. Neither the state nor the Narmada Control Authority has published a payment schedule. The Review Committee called for time-bound settlement of the dues, so the first transfers from Bhopal and Mumbai are the next thing to look for.
Sources: DeshGujarat, IANS via Punjab Kesari, ANI via Asianet Newsable, Free Press Journal, National Herald, Devdiscourse, Telangana Today
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.