BY C. ANAND REDDY NEW DELHI The Centre is in a fix, as state governments do not agree on Centre's version of inter-basin river water transfers. This further complicates the Centre's efforts to take forward the gigantic project of interlinking of rivers. The National Water Development Agency, which is the nodal agency for inter-linking of rivers, has been carrying out studies under a National Perspective Plan for water resources development. The NWDA has identified the states which are to be benefited from the inter-basin water transfer links and assessed the annual irrigation benefits likely to accrue to the concerned states from these link schemes. But the problem has been that the NWDA's assessments that surpluses are available in Mahanadi and Godavari is not shared by the governments of Orissa and AP. Commenting on the difficulty in asking the states to agree for water transfer across river basins, former secretary in the water resources ministry, Ramaswamy R. Iyer has said, "The answer to the difficulty of persuading Karnataka to release Cauvery waters for Tamil Nadu, a co-riparian state, lies in even more difficult course of persuading Orissa to spare Mahanadi waters for non-riparian states (like Andhra Pradesh).' Similarly, the GodavariKrishna link project called the Polavaram project, taken up by the government of AP, is mired in controversy due to lack of agreement between the riparian states of AP, Orissa and Chhattisgarh. The difficulty for the Centre in roping in state governments on such vital issues is evident from the fact that the ministry of water resources has been arguing the case for transfer of "water' subject from the state list to the concurrent list.