ITO barrage row: Delhi govt says Haryana govt apprised of issue in past

New Delhi, Jul 17 (PTI) Amid a controversy over the maintenance of ITO barrage here, the Delhi government on Monday said the matter was raised with the Haryana government on many occasions in the past.

Reacting to the AAP-led Delhi government's claims that the gates of the ITO barrage in Delhi maintained by the Haryana government had jammed due to silt accumulation, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Sunday said the AAP never mentioned that such a problem could come up.

Khattar has formed a two-member fact-finding committee to look into the jammed gates of the ITO barrage on the Yamuna river.  The issue snowballed into a blame game between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as many parts of the national capital were inundated by a raging Yamuna that flowed well over danger mark.

"We checked our records. For its (ITO barrage) maintenance, money never went from Haryana. That was given by the Indraprastha power plant till 2018 which is shut now," Khattar had said. "The AAP government never said this problem could come. They are talking about it now when the problem has arisen," he said in Rohtak.   A statement from the Delhi government stated that thermal power plants had an agreement of using water from the ITO barrage and giving some money to the Haryana government.  "These thermal plants got decommissioned in 2009 and they had no reason to pay any money. The Haryana government knows these facts and they were informed about this in 2019," it said.

The statement added that letters were written to the Haryana government in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2022 to hand over the ITO barrage to the Delhi government, but in vain.

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