To control the alarming trend of over exploitation of groundwater and ensure its judicious use in agriculture sector, the Punjab Government has approved a policy — Agriculture Power (AP) Tube Wells Policy — stipulating guidelines for the release of electric connections for agricultural pump sets in the State for 2013-14.
Under the policy, Punjab Electricity Regulatory Commission has mandated the State Government to decide the number of agricultural pump set connections to be released each year for reasons of ecology, inadequate groundwater potential and declining water table.
The new policy have been formulated in the backdrop of State Government’s ambitious programme of crop diversification, stated a spokesperson of the Chief Minister’s Office on Sunday. The policy also aimed to popularise drip or micro irrigation amongst farmers, especially the vegetable and fruit growers with a thrust on conservation of water.
“Reckless use of groundwater has rendered 45 blocks in Punjab as over exploited as revealed in the latest report of Central Ground Water Authority…Accordingly, CM Parkash Singh Badal gave a go ahead to these policy for the current fiscal and a proposed target of 25,000 AP connections has been fixed,” he added.
Under the policy, it would be incumbent on the part of State Government to fix the target for the release of AP connections annually in the beginning of every year and in any case the total number of AP connections released by the PSPCl in a year would not exceed the target fixed by the State Government. Giving the category-wise breakup of 25,000 AP connections to be released in a year, the spokesperson said that general category would be allotted 15,000 AP connections (60%), priority categories 7,500 (30%) besides 2,500 (10%) to miscellaneous category.
Further stipulated that under the general category 60% of AP connections (9,000) would be allotted to the applicants comprising small farmers having land upto 2.5 acre and without any tubewell connection, 20% (3,000) connections for marginal farmers having more than 2.5 acre land and upto five acre whereas the remaining 20% (3,000) connections for big farmers having land holding more than five acre.
The priority categories included the applicants having land across international border fencing and River Ravi, Kandi Area, family partition, ex-servicemen, members of Schedule Caste communities, Gallantry Awardees (Armed Forces and Civilians), Martyrs of Kargil War, Operation Rakshak in J&K and insurgency.
Similarly, the miscellaneous category covered religious institutions including Gau Shalas, Gram Panchayats, Drip or Micro Sprinkler System, Water logged areas, Adarsh Schools and others.
The guidelines of new AP connection policy also envisaged the ecological revival of Holy Bein as a priority category eligible for connection for de-watering of the pond water and using the same for irrigation of land of Panchayat or farmer of 103 villages identified under Hoshiarpur and Kapurthala districts.
The tubewell connections would be released in the name of gram panchayat under the gram panchayat priority and condition of minimum one acre land holding should not be applicable for release of such tube well connections.
Further, in order to clear the backlog of general category applications, pending since long, 50,000 additional connections under the Accelerated Release of Tube Well Connections (ARTC) scheme were proposed to be released on priority through outsourcing or departmentally in view of the financial constraints of PSPCl during 2011-12 as per guidelines approved by the state government.