Content courtesy: Press Information Bureau
The Committee on Allocation of Natural Resources (CANR) under the chairmanship of Shri Ashok Chawla submitted its report on 31st May, 2011. The major recommendations of CANR on water are given below. The recommendations of CANR have been referred to Group of Ministers.
The major recommendations of the Committee are -
- The Committee sees an urgent need to have a comprehensive national legislation on water. This can be either done through bringing water under the Concurrent List and then framing the appropriate legislation; or, by obtaining consensus from a majority of the States that such a “framework law” is necessary and desirable as a Union enactment. The legal options in this regard need to be examined by the Ministry of Water Resources. The national legislation should clarify a common position on a number of issues, e.g., need to consider all water resources as a conjunctive, unified whole; water as a common property resource; principles of allocations and pricing and so on. The framework legislation should recognize that pollution also leads to conjunctive use of water, which makes the resource unusable for other purposes.
- In the meantime, the Committee recommends amending the River Boards’ Act, 1956 and include groundwater in its ambit, while assigning the River Boards Act (RBA) a managerial role in management of water resources. The process of seeking political consensus from States for making the Act more effective should be taken up pro-actively by the Union Government's Ministry of Water Resources.
- The Committee recommends aquifer level mapping, along with hydro-geological studies, and pilot projects to be initiated in different settings to address the problems of groundwater management urgently.
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