Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis laid down the road map to make Maharashtra drought-free.

The move will see interlinking Wainganga and Nalganga rivers in Vidarbha; besides, excess rain water in eastern Vidarbha will be diverted to western Vidarbha.

A 480 km-long tunnel will be built to stop additional water from flowing to Telangana and, instead, diverting it to meet the needs of western parts of Vidarbha.

The project has received a green nod form the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) and will divert 1,900 TMC water from the Gosikhurd dam to the Nalganga river, also referred to as Purna and Tapi in west Vidarbha.

As per the proposal before the NWDA, a link canal of the Wainganga-Nalganga project will take off from the right flank of the Gosikhurd dam and traverse a length of 478.2 km through Bhandara, Nagpur, Wardha, Amravati, Akola and Buldana districts.

The project envisages bringing 4,13,750 ha of cultivable command area under irrigation, besides proposed to cater to the future municipal and industrial water requirements in the command area and the city of Nagpur.

Around 22 lakh humans and industrial water requirement are proposed to be served by 2050. The cost of the project was estimated at Rs 8,294.26 crore in 2007-08.

Around 167 TMC water from Konkan will be diverted to the Godavari river basin to lessen the drought in Marathwada and north Maharashtra.