Initiating steps to get rid of inconvenience due to water-logging in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, the Yogi Adityanath government has launched a special campaign for cleaning canals and drains across the state.
In this regard, a target has been set to clean the drains in rural areas along with making provisions of additional funds. The responsibility of cleaning the canals and drains has been entrusted to the Irrigation and Water Resource department.
Through this campaign, damage to crops due to waterlogging has been stopped and the income of farmers also increased due to healthy production. “It is completely the responsibility of the Irrigation and Water Resource department to clean 10,675 canals measuring about 59,212 kilometres,” a government spokesman said in Lucknow.
Due to fund crunch, canals of about 1,500 to 1,600 kilometres were cleaned every year. As soon as the problem came to the knowledge of the chief minister, he provided additional funds for cleaning the canals in 2020-21. Now, in the 2021-22 financial year, a target has been set to clean drains and canals measuring 23,043 kilometres. Till date, the Water Resource and Irrigation department has been able to clean drains of 15,100 kilometres length at a cost of more than Rs 185 crore.
With the development of rural areas, the Yogi government is paying special attention to agriculture and threshing. Under this, it has done many works to provide relief to the farmers even during the pandemic-induced lockdown.