The department of Water Resources has decided to revive old irrigation schemes instead of rolling out new ones in the State. The decision to revive earlier schemes has been arrived at after obtaining feedback in field visits by the officials of the department.
While elaborating about the achievements of Water Resources and Drinking Water and Sanitation Department Minister CP Chaudhary expressed the change in strategy to suit to the requirements of the State. Chaudhary added that the Government successfully facilitated irrigation of lands through canals besides, provision of creating 751 check dams in the State.
“The department has taken a decision that the old schemes lingering on for 25 years and were in a shambles would be revived. We inspected various schemes, which were running earlier and in the course of time people informed us about the benefits of those schemes, so, we have decided to complete those schemes,” said Chaudhary.
Notwithstanding the shift in strategy because of the inherent benefits of schemes, the department’s decision is an outcome of the resistance faced at the local level and in initial stages of project execution.
The department of Water Resources has mended the course of development strategy as the social impact assessment indicated that someone’s gain becomes someone’s loss when the project usually takes off.
“The decision has been taken as a lot of resistance is usually faced during land acquisition. It becomes difficult to convince people about the findings of social impact assessment, since people lose their land and benefits are reaped by others. The decision has been taken to do away with these types of problems,” maintained Principal Secretary of Water Resources, Sukhdev Singh.
As many as 103 irrigation schemes are currently in effect and around 70 projects would be the prime focus of the department.
Notably, around 24-lakh hectare of agricultural land could be irrigated by utilising State’s resources, however, only 36 per cent of the total irrigable land has been covered so far. The Principal Secretary of Water Resources added that the major reason is the deterioration of various reasons, including siltation, leakages and other faults.
Meanwhile, the Drinking Water and Sanitation Department is exploring alternative water resources to mitigate impact of falling water table and fast shrinking reservoirs that quench thirst of Ranchiites.
The task would be jointly undertaken by Water Resources and DWSD. The need to look for alternate sources would become a necessity once the Getalsud-Ranchi water pipeline project begins supply of water from the reservoir.
The project is being done by l&T infra and it is likely to complete by October, 2016. “We have decided to create alternate source of reservoir,” said Secretary of DWSD, AP Singh.
An interdepartmental high-level technical committee is in the offing which will look for alternate sources of drinking water for the capital and would prepare a detailed project report for the development of the sources which will be identified.
Chaudhary added that the water pipeline project, a recently started project to supply water in areas covered by Hatia division of DWSD, would be completed in January, 2016. The DWSD Minister maintained that deep boring has been banned considering the pressure on underground water table.
He also asserted that the department would meet the target of creating toilets to add more villages in the open-defecation free category in the current financial year.