NEW DELHI: A week after Union finance minister Arun Jaitley pitched for inter-linking of rivers during his budget presentation saying the move can yield "rich dividend", the water resources and Ganga rejuvenation minister Uma Bharti on Thursday said rivers across the country can be linked in 10 years time if concerned states give their consent.Replying to a supplementary question in Lok Sabha, Bharti said the inter-linking of rivers would strengthen the Prime Minister rural irrigation scheme.Allaying concerns of members, she, however, insisted that the inter-linking of rivers (ILRs) would be implemented in such a way that it would ensure their uninterrupted flow and purity.Her remarks assume significance in the light of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government push for the move.Calling for a serious effort in the direction of river inter-linking, Jaitley has in the budget for the period 2014-15 allocated Rs 100 crore to expedite preparation of detailed project reports.In his maiden budget speech in Lok Sabha on July 10, Jaitley said that rivers were the lifeline of the country as they provide water not only for producing food but also for drinking."Unfortunately, the country is not uniformly blessed with perennial rivers. Therefore, an effort to link the rivers can give rich dividends... It is time we made a serious effort in this direction. To expedite the preparation of the Detailed Project Reports, I propose to set aside a sum of Rs 100 crore," he had said.It is learnt that the Centre in its effort to link the rivers would first take consent of state governments while cautiously selecting the specific project for implementation.Though the Ken-Betwa river link would be the first to be implemented under the Modi government as both the concerned states - Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh - had already given their consents for this purpose, the focus will primarily be on linking rivers of sub-basins within a basin or nearby basins instead of going on for distant inter-basin river linkages.Environment minister Prakash Javadekar had told the TOI last month that the ILR was an inter-ministerial matter which would soon be discussed thoroughly. ""We will do the interlinking of rivers in a manner that it simultaneously takes care of drinking-water\irrigation needs of people and ecological concerns,"" he had said.Though the interlinking of river was mooted way back in 1982, it was actively taken up during Atal Bihari Vajpayee's tenure as Prime Minister during 1999-2004. It, however, fell off the radar once the UPA came to power.The UPA did take it up only during its last year in office after the Supreme Court had in February, 2012 directed the Centre to implement the ILR project in a time-bound manner and appointed a high-powered committee for its planning and implementation.The full ILR project has two components — the peninsular and the Himalayan. The peninsular component involving the rivers in southern India — envisaged developing a 'Southern Water Grid' with 16 river linkages in different states.This component included diversion of the surplus waters of Mahanadi and Godavari to the Pennar, Krishna, Vaigai and Cauvery rivers.The Himalayan component, on the other hand, was conceived for building storage reservoirs on the Ganga and the Brahmaputra and their main tributaries both in India and Nepal in order to conserve water during the monsoon for irrigation and generation of hydro-power, besides checking floods.The Himalayan component is comprised of 14 links including Brahamputra-Ganga, Kosi-Ghagra, Kosi-Mech, Ghagra-Yamuna, Gandak-Ganga, Sarda-Yamuna, Farakka-Sunderbans, Subernarekha-Mahanadi, and Ganga-Damodar-Subernarekha.Both the components together have 30 river-linking projects.Under the UPA, the detailed project reports (DPR) of only three projects, including interstate Ken-Betwa river link,had been prepared. Though total cost of all the river linking projects has been estimated at around Rs 5,60,000 crore, the actual cost will be known only after the DPRs of all the rive link projects are drawn up.The projects — which have, so far, more or less remained on papers — will make water available for irrigating 35 million hectares, generate hydroelectricity to the tune of 34,000MW and control floods in many states across the country, if implemented.The Ken-Betwa river link is one of the projects which got its green signal from the apex court following a tripartite memorandum of understanding signed between the Centre and the chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.