Inside Jharkhand & Bihar's 25-Year Sone River Dispute, Pg17

Key Highlights:

• Bihar and Jharkhand resolved their 25-year-old dispute over Sone river water sharing with an inter-state Memorandum of Understanding.
• Under the agreement, Bihar will receive 5.75 Million Acre-Feet (MAF) of water, while Jharkhand will receive 2 MAF.
• The resolution is expected to facilitate long-delayed irrigation, reservoir, and river-linking projects in drought-prone regions of both states.
• The dispute originated after Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar in November 2000, inheriting major upper catchment areas of the Sone river.
• The agreement also clears the path for the full operation of the Indrapuri Barrage in Rohtas district, benefiting Bihar's agricultural belt.

Detailed Insights:

• The Sone river flows northward from Madhya Pradesh, through Uttar Pradesh, and along the Jharkhand-Bihar boundary before joining the Ganga in Bihar.
• The core of the dispute traced back to the 1973 Bansagar Agreement, a tripartite pact involving Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, which allocated 7.75 MAF to undivided Bihar.
• After Bihar's division, no binding formula existed to split the 7.75 MAF allocation between Bihar and the newly formed state of Jharkhand.
• The agreement ensures critical irrigation supplies to the Magadh belt in south Bihar and enables new canal networks in Jharkhand's drought-prone Palamu and Garhwa districts.
• Jharkhand agreed to specified reservoir water levels to minimize land submergence, backed by clear rehabilitation provisions for affected populations.
• The Indrapuri Barrage, built in the late 1960s, is a primary diversion structure supplying water to the extensive Sone canal network for irrigation.
• While no major state-level confrontations occurred, the water dispute frequently became a political issue during election seasons in both states.

Key Concepts Involved:

• Inter-state water dispute: Conflicts between states over the sharing and management of river waters.
• Riparian rights: The rights of landowners whose property borders a river or other body of water to use that water.
• Barrage: A low-level dam built across a river to divert water for irrigation or other purposes, typically with gates to control flow.
• Million Acre-Feet (MAF): A unit of volume commonly used to describe large quantities of water, equal to the volume of water that would cover one million acres to a depth of one foot.