Express News Service
AHMEDABAD: Amid intense protest from tribals against the proposed Par-Tapi-Narmada river inter-linking project ahead of the Gujarat election, the BJP leadership is learnt to have put the project on ice.
While there was no clear word on whether it has actually been scrapped, Gujarat BJP president CR Patil said the central project was subject to approval from Maharashtra and Gujarat; with declining permission, it is as good as dead.
The decision to shelve the controversial project was taken at a meeting of Union ministers Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and tribal MLAs and MPs from the state, Patil said.
Tribals are influential in Gujarat as 27 out of 182 Assembly seats are reserved for STs. They have been protesting after Sitharaman said in her Budget speech that the draft project reports of five river-linking projects, including the one in Gujarat, have been finalised.
With public outrage stalling the river-link project in Gujarat, there is now a question mark on other projects elsewhere in the country. While Patil explained that the project will not be given the go-ahead by the BJP, the Congress and tribal leaders are not convinced.
Gujarat Congress chief spokesperson Manish Doshi said if a decision to nix the project was indeed taken, it should have been announced by the chief minister of and not the state party chief. “The BJP state president has no right to announce a government decision,” Doshi said.
Tribal leader Sunil Gamit said protests will continue till the government issues a white paper on scrapping the project.