About 1,980 hectares more of land will be irrigated after the completion of Jhonk barrage project. A time-limit has been fixed for the completion of the barrage, officials said.
An amount of Rs91.83 crore had been sanctioned for the construction of lower Jhonk Barrage Scheme at Pithora development block in Mahasamund district by the Water Resources Department in Naya Raipur.
Meanwhile, for expansion of irrigation capacity in State, a special campaign has been launched to expedite ongoing construction works under irrigation schemes and to expand capacity of already built schemes, officials said. As a result of this campaign, irrigated area in state has increased from 24 per cent to 34.2 per cent.
In his address to the national seminar of Water Resource Ministers- ‘Jal Manthan’ organised recently in New Delhi, Water Resource Minister Brijmohan Agrawal had informed that after formation of state, Chhattisgarh has expanded its irrigation capacity over 5.76 lakh hectare area, as on March 2014, in span of about 14 years.
This has increased the irrigation capacity of state to 19 lakh 4 thousand hectare.
He told that as per the guidelines of Chief Minister Raman Singh, the under-construction schemes in state were completed soon. The number of extensive irrigation schemes has increased from 3 to 8. Number of medium irrigation schemes has increased to 35 and small irrigation schemes have reached 2410.
Chhattisgarh has total 2453 irrigation schemes. In this way, Water Resource Department has completed 482 new schemes. At the time of state formation in year 2000, Chhattisgarh had three extensive, 29 medium and 1945 small irrigation schemes with total irrigation capacity of 13.28 lakh hectares.