Government sitting on River proposal for 5 years

KOCHI: More than five years after preparing the draft, attempts to set up a River Authority in the state have not reached anywhere. The government has been sitting on a proposal made to set up an authority along with River Boards for all the rivers in the state. In 2005, a draft for a River Authority was prepared and submitted before the then Water Resources Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan. “The Minister had agreed to take steps to set up the authority. Later, in 2007, all the environmental organisations together submitted a modified draft before Water Resources Minister N K Premachandran. The LDF Government did not pursue the matter further,” C M Joy, general secretary of the All-Kerala River Protection Council, which prepared the draft for the authority, said.He said more than 18 departments were directly dependent on the rivers. A river authority was needed to coordinate the activities of these departments and to conserve the rivers. There was also a proposal for setting up a board for all prominent rivers in the state. The previous UDF Government had announced in the Assembly that a River Authority would be set up, he said.Revenue Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, who was handling the Water Resources Department in the last UDF Government, said that he would support the initiative if the issue cropped up again. “When we received the draft in 2005 we had decided to set up the authority soon. Later, Premachandran said he would bring in a Water Authority Bill before the Assembly. Somehow it did not happen,” Thiruvanchoor said, and added that he would support attempts to set up the authority. Meanwhile, Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment executive vice-president C T S Nair said that the previous government had brought in an ordinance in April to set up the Wetlands Authority and River Boards. “Setting up of a new River Authority would be connected with this ordinance,” he said.