Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel on Sunday termed Odisha’s objection to Chhattisgarh constructing ‘anicuts’ over Mahanadi river as “pointless” and stated that the river originates from the state, so why should not the state make smaller stop dams for its own utilization of water.

He was answering to a question raised during a function “Changing Chhattisgarh under new leadership” on Sunday organized at India International Centre, New Delhi.

Baghel said, “Odisha had made the massive Hirakund dam and    storing water to be utilised for    industries and power generation but it has not benefitted the Chhattisgarh and its people at any level.”

On the Polavaram water sharing issue with Andhra Pradesh, he said part of the state will be         submerged for which the state has approached the Supreme Court. The state will demand adequate compensation for it.

As per details, based on Supreme Court’s order in January (2018), the Ministry of Water Resources had notified the setting up of a Tribunal to resolve the dispute between Odisha and Chhattisgarh over the sharing of the water of the Mahanadi river.

Actually, the Mahanadi river originates  from Dhamtari district and travels around 851 kilometres to fall into the Bay of Bengal near Konark, Odisha. The rivers passes over the states of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, small parts of Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Odisha government has filed a plea in the Supreme Court for an injunction to stop work on six industrial barrages on the upstream of the Mahanadi. Following the plea the construction works in Chhattisgarh were stopped. Earlier, Union minister Nitin Gadkari and former union minister of water resources, river development and Ganga rejuvenation Uma Bharti initiated talks between the two states but could not come up with a solution.