Administrative delays, non-adherence to provisions and rules, poor contract management and lack of effective and timely monitoring have taken a toll on the 16 big irrigation projects launched over the years under the Centre’s flagship Scheme of National Projects conceived in 2008 across the country.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in its report tabled in Parliament on Friday said that as of March 2017, even though five out of 16 national projects with estimated Irrigation potential (IP) of 25.10 lakh hectares have been executed, none of them was running at full utilization—of 14.53 lakh hectares IP, a mere 5.36 lakh Hectares (37 per cent) IP is being utilised.
The remaining 11 projects with estimated IP of 10.48 lakh hectares are yet to start.
A performance audit of the scheme brought out that their fundamental objective remained unachieved though an expenditure of Rs 13,299.12 crore had been incurred on the five dams —Gosikhurd, Teesta, Saryu, Indira Sagar Polavaram project, and Shahpur Kandi project.
The cost escalation in the five projects before their inclusion in the scheme was Rs 32,802 crore even as these have not been able to reach a stage where the benefits of power generation, drinking water and reservoir creation can be delivered except for creation of 0.53 Million Acre Feet storage in Gosikhurd project.
The remaining 11 projects are lakhwar Project, Renuka Dam, Ujh Project, Ken Betwa Project, Kulsi dam , Noah Dihing, Bursar HE, Gyspa HE Project , Ravi Project and Upper Siang Project and Kishau Project .
Two projects Indira Sagar Polavaram project and Gosikhurd project, have alone registered a cost escalation of Rs 49,840 crore over the previous escalation. Remaining three projects have already overshot their approved completion time and none of them is near completion.
“The tardy implementation and cost escalation was attributable to management failures and deficiencies in terms of non-adherence to codal provisions relating to survey and investigations which resulted in additional cost of Rs 903.67 crore,” said the report.