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Baalu seeks Centre’s plan to tackle water scarcity
The water crisis in Chennai figured prominently in the Lok Sabha on Thursday when members of the DMK raised the issue and demanded Centre’s intervention to save the metropolis from scarcity in summer.
By
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New Delhi
Leader of the DMK in Parliament TR Baalu raised the question in the House seeking to know from the government whether it was aware of Niti Ayog’s report that many cities, including New Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad are set to run out of ground water by 2020.
Minister of State for Water Resources Rattan Lal Kataria said the Centre has launched the Atal Bhujal Yojana to recharge the ground water in some parts of the country.
Baalu said the Niti Ayog’s report was mind boggling that by 2020, 21 states will not get access to water, two lakh people will die and 600 million people would face drinking water scarcity.
“Will the government wake up from its deep slumber and bring out a comprehensive scheme to ensure water supply in all states,” he asked.
Baalu said reservoirs like Poondi and Chembarambakkam have dried up and wanted to know whether the government would think of an Israeli model floating water desalination plants to resolve the water crisis in Chennai.
For that the Minister replied, “we have a Modi model and we don’t have to copy other models.”
Earlier, raising a supplementary to another question, DMK member Dayanidhi Maran said there was a project for recharging ground water in 21 districts of Tamil Nadu, but the state government has not started any work and the Centre was discriminating against the state.
Kanimozhi slams Centre’s efforts to ‘saffronise’ history
DMK leader Kanimozhi on Thursday accused the Narendra Modi government of not only painting the contemporary India ‘saffron’ but going back in history to paint the past in the Hindutva colour as well.
Speaking during a discussion on the Union Budget, she hit out at Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for “going out of way to rename Indus Valley civilisation as Saraswati Sindhu civilization” and asked the government to leave such work to scholars and historians.
Even experts have not come out with any conclusive proof of the existence of “mythical” Saraswati river, she said, accusing the BJP of always attempting to rewrite history.
In her budget speech on February 1, Sitharaman had said that entrepreneurial enterprise existed in ancient India and referred to “Saraswati-Sindhu” civilisation.
Kanimozhi said even scholars had not been able to decipher Indus script as she wondered as to how Sitharaman quoted from the era.
The DMK leader asked as to how the government will meet its targets as proposed in the Budget when economic growth is only 5 per cent.
Criticising the recommendations of 15th Finance Commission on divisions of tax revenue between the Centre and states, she said they are unfair to states which have controlled population growth due to their consideration of demography as a basis for its proposals.
She also criticised the move to ask states to pay fordefence allocation, saying it comes under the Centre’s purview and the expenditure should be borne by it.
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