Rajasthan sends Groundwater Management Bill back to Select Committee amid opposition concerns

JAIPUR Jaipur. The Rajasthan government has once again taken a U-turn on the Groundwater Management Authority Bill and has sent it once again to the Select Committee of the House. The said bill was brought to regulate groundwater exploitation in the state and had stringent provisions. After the debate on this bill in the Assembly on Wednesday, Water Supply Minister Kanhaiya Lal Chaudhary proposed to send the bill to the Select Committee, which was approved by the House.

The minister said in the House, “In view of the environmental challenges, the said bill is the need of the hour, but during the debate in the House we got some more suggestions, so the government considers it appropriate to send the bill once again to the Select Committee of the House to incorporate these suggestions.” During the debate on the bill, opposition MLAs questioned the provisions for registration of all tube-well digging machines and all tube-wells. The MLAs said that the government does not have enough resources for this. Congress MLAs Hakim Ali, Rafiq Khan and Harimohan Sharma said that the government is keeping an eye on the water. This will allow the bureaucracy to control the availability of water.

Notably, the Bill provides for direct control of the State Government over the exploitation of groundwater by constituting a State-level authority to grant permission to dig borewells. The said authority is empowered to fix tariffs for all uses of groundwater based on volumetric measurement of water consumption. Non-compliance with the provisions of the Bill attracts a jail term of up to six months and a fine of Rs 50,000.

It is worth noting that Rajasthan is a water-scarce state and this crisis is deepening day by day. According to a study conducted in the year 2023, 216 blocks are in the overexploited category.