In a bid to evolve an amicable solution to property dispute involving Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, the State Revenue Minister Yashpal Arya convened a meeting with his officials on Saturday. During the meeting, he instructed the secretary, irrigation to meet his UP counterpart over the UP Government not releasing Uttarakhand’s 13,813 hectare land worth Rs4,200 crore.
Recently, lohiyahead hydro power project has incurred a major loss because the dam, which was under control of UP irrigation department, breached and then washed away the staff quarter of the projects because they did not act when action was required.
After reviewing the Jamrani dam, Arya instructed the irrigation secretary to constitute a committee and include Garhwal and Kumaon chief engineers and heads of the department in it. The committee will monitor the dam and its power generation capacity and drinking water availability.
During the meeting, it was disclosed that Sharda dam has not been repaired over the past few years. For this, you ask your UP counterpart to appoint an executive engineer so that they will monitor the construction and repair wherever that is required. With this, the State would receive a major relief. Thus, you should put best efforts to sort this issue out, he said to the official.
It would be pertinent to mention here that several pieces of lands and canals, which were allocated to the Uttarakhand, are yet to be released by the UP Government. Things are strange as these canals, located well within Uttarakhand, are being controlled by the UP Government. The long-standing issue must be amicably settled with the UP counterpart b way of dialogue, the Minister stressed.
Even the Supreme Court had instructed the Union Government to resolve the dispute between UP and Uttarakhand. With this objective in view, the Union Water Resource Ministry had convened a meeting involving the two States. Subsequently, it was decided that UP would hand over 41 canals, including 28 in Haridwar and 13 in Udham Singh Nagar districts of Uttarakhand, and Uttarakhand, on its part, would hand over eight canals to UP. Works are in progress, but the final result is yet to come. Hence, the need to drive things to their logical conclusion, the Minister said.
Secretary, irrigation Ajay Kumar Pradyot said that during the time when UP was undivided 13,813.433 hectare land, which is under the control of the irrigation department, was located in Uttarakhand side. Out of this, 696.576 hectare land is situated in Haridwar and falls under Kumbha region. It has already been transferred to Uttarakhand. This aside, 3,321.495 hectare land in Haridwar city, 119.030 hectare land in Pauri Garhwal and 687.420 hectare land in Udham Singh Nagar are there and these lands are yet to be transferred to Uttarakhand by UP, he added.
Six dams and water reservoirs are still under the control of UP. 2035 housing buildings and 173 buildings, which are located in Uttarakhand but under control of UP, are yet to be transferred to Uttarakhand. Around 192 kilometer area, which is under the canals, is yet to be transferred to Uttarakhand. Once these are transferred we would build road on this land and people of Uttarakhand will reap the benefit.
During the meeting, the secretary, irrigation Ajay Pradyot, chief engineer & HoD, VK Tamta, Chief Engineer (Garhwal) DP Jugran, chief engineer (Kumaon) DC Singh, executive engineer Vinod Kumar Pant and executive engineer Dr K Pachauri were present.