English
New Delhi, May 7: Following three days of water train drama between centre and the Uttar Pradesh government, UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday morning to discuss the drought situation and water scarcity in the state. Modi had recently written to three chief ministers of the drought-hit states Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka inviting them to the capital to assess the situation.
The meeting mainly focussed on the drought mitigation measures taken in the state to get rid of the precarious situation the state is currently in. As soon as the meeting got over, Yadav said that there is lot of water at the Bundelkhand dams, but proper distribution is the need of the hour. “There is enough water in the dams of Bundelkhand. We need tankers to lift it. A train will not be able to reach those villages,” Yadav was quoted as saying by NDTV. (ALSO READ: Narendra Modi invites CMs of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka to discuss drought)
The meeting is thought to be a crucial one with Bundelkhand spread over Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and the fact that the UP Assembly Elections are due in a year’s time. If sources are anything to go by, centre is pressing for long-term visible measures for the states which are frequently affected by drought. The ruling Samajwadi Party, on the other hand, doesn’t want the centre to win some brownie points ahead of the Assembly elections.
It may be recalled that the centre had sent a water train to UP, which has been parked at the Jhansi station which prompted Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti to shoot a letter to UP chief minister on Thursday enquiring the reason for the water train to be parked which was demanded by the Madhya Pradesh lawmakers. Bundelkhand is comprised of 13 districts spread over both Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
Yadav, in his reply to Bharti, wrote that Bundelkhand reservoirs has lot of water, what it only needs are 10,000 water tankers, and not train, for distributing it to the drought-hit regions of the state.
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