GAURAV M PANDIT Vs. CHIEF EXECUTIVE ENGINEER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner in-person preferred public interest litigation for direction on the respondents to release water through main gates of Dharoi Dam so as to ensure that water reaches Pethapur, in Dist. Gandhinagar. Further prayer has been made to direct the respondents to ensure that from beginning of October till 1st of April each year and each month, information is given through local newspaper to the people about percentage-wise water distribution as made in each month so that the people come to know the input of water in the canal, which passes through Kantha Vistar.

(2.) ACCORDING to the petitioner, in good old days, the farmers of the Kantha vistar has seen the water of river Sabarmati flowing, though it may be thin and lean flow of water, but it was round the year. Even the little water which was flowing through Sabarmati was enough for drinking and growing grains, vegetables and beans in small patches of land on the river banks; and the life was wonderful; they rarely needed to use currency, but now water is no more in Sabarmati river for whole of the year though it flows only during the rainy season and in fact the farmers have become farm labourers of rich farmers.

(3.) MS Krina Calla, learned AGP would submit that river Sabarmati originates from ranges of Aravalli hills in Udaipur in Rajasthan. The river has a total catchment area of 5540 sq.kms., out of which, 2901 sq.kms area falls in Rajasthan and remaining 2639 sq.kms. in Gujarat. At the end, the river meets the Arabian sea in the Gulf of Cambay. The main tributaries of Sabarmati river are Wakal river and the Sei Nadi, which also starts from Aravalli hills in Udaipur, Rajasthan and flows south westwards in courses generally parallel to the Sabarmati river.