Even as a public interest litigation demanding a fair share of water for the arid Kutch region is pending in Gujarat High Court, the Kutch unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party has stepped up pressure on Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel to increase the water allocation. They even convened a meeting in Bhuj on Wednesday.

But the State Government may find itself in a tight spot for it appears unable to provide anything more to Kutch from the SSP. State Narmada Development Minister Jaynarayan Vyas told Express Newsline, ``Kutch has been given adequate allocation. It is not the area of a district but its irrigable area that gets precedence. No injustice has been done to any region.'' Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited Managing Director C K Koshy has the same view. Says Koshy, ``Water allocation is a technical thing and not a political one. The allocation was fixed after a lot of application of mind by the NWDT and the D.T. Buch Committee; it has been stretched to the maximum.''

As many as 100 people attended Wednesday's meeting of the Kutch BJP. This included MP Pushpadan Gadhvi and Rajya Sabha member Anant Dave, besides several local party functionaries. The district unit, which is controlled by the Suresh Mehta group, has sent two letters to Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel on October 19 and November 11 seeking an audience with him on the issue. Patel is yet to grant an appointment. The litigation filed by the Kutch Jal Sankat Nivaran Samiti and seven others, including retired government officials and social workers, is expected to come up for hearing early next month. The petitioners want to know why the Gujarat Government which had cited the perennial scarcity and strategic border location of Kutch as the main reason for a better share of SSP benefits to the State was giving short shrift to the region.

The Samiti says the SSP will cover only 94,600 acres under irrigation in Kutch, while the State Government spoke of irrigating as many as 11 lakh acres in its submissions before the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal (NWDT). Of the nine million acre feet for Gujarat, the allocation for Kutch is less than two per cent, covers only four talukas and 73 villages, the Samiti says, quoting official figures. Against this, Central Gujarat gets 31.3 per cent, North Gujarat 45 per cent and Saurashtra 21 per cent. The Samiti, along with the Kutch BJP and the Narmada Bachao Andolan, points out in its petition that Kutch has 59 lakh acres of cultivable land which is of little use without adequate water. ``Kutch has a long history of droughts and famines, of bankruptcy of irrigational facilities and water scarcity, of migration and de-population, and of continuous decline of underground water and perilous spread of salinity.''

It contends that distribution of water from the SSP is prima facie irrational. ``For instance, Ahmedabad district is one-fifth of Kutch (which is as large as 25 per cent of the entire State) but gets nearly 10 times more water for irrigation,'' the petitioners say.

When contacted, former Water Resources Adviser to the State Government C C Patel said, ``Kutch indeed needs water and I think the Gujarat Government must be planning to do something about this.''