Gehlot govt played politics on water issue, says Shekhawat

Jodhpur: Union jal shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on Monday accused former chief minister Ashok Gehlot of playing politics on the issue of water scarcity, saying that the public had punished him for it. “Gehlot will certainly have to face the consequences of this sin,” Shekhawat said.
Shekhawat said this while speaking to the media in Jodhpur about the Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project (ERCP), following the singing of an MoU on water sharing between Rajasthan and MP governments in New Delhi on Sunday.
He said that it was because of the stubbornness of the Gehlot government that the project could not move forward. “Discussions were held at the bureaucratic level at that time as well. Unfortunately, due to the political stance of the Gehlot government, it could not move forward despite agreements reached on bureaucratic level during the Gehlot government,” said Shekhawat.
He said that both states had now witnessed a change in government and this had made possible the agreement between them on ERCP. “I had promised that if the BJP government was formed in Rajasthan, we would approve it in the first cabinet meeting after the election. We have indeed done so,” Shekhawat said.
When Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister , there was a plan to connect Parvati-Kali Sindh-Chambal rivers in eastern Rajasthan for irrigation. However, due to lack of agreement between Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the project was put on hold.
Later, during the tenure of the Vasundhara Raje government in Rajasthan, the ERCP was conceived for providing water to 13 districts of eastern Rajasthan.