Mumbai/ Nagpur: Under its much claimed Jalyukta Shivar Yojana, the Maharashtra government has completed 1.20 lakh works under its flagship Water Conservation Scheme (Jalyukta Shivar Yojana). Another 35,000 works are in progress, officials said.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has directed officials to include the construction of farm ponds under the MNREGA scheme. The state has aimed at a target of 1.50 farm ponds through the scheme over the next three years. The state is also planning to map and revive water sources in each district,under Nashik, Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Amravati and Konkan divisions, added the sources.
Maharashtra government is supervising the progress of work of the ‘Jalyukta Shivar’ water conservation schemes in order to complete them before the monsoon begins, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said today.
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Thursday 07 Nov. 2024
Over 30,000 ‘Jalyukta Shivar’ sites are being supervised through satellites by the Maharashtra Remote Sensing Application Center (MRSAC). ‘Jalyukta Shivar Abhiyan’ is the flagship program of Fadnavis who has set a target to rid Maharashtra of drought within a period of five years.
Talking about the project, Fadnavis said that in the first phase, the government has chosen 6,000 villages out of 20,000 which are in drought prone areas across the state. “More than 30,000 water conservation projects are in progress in the selected 6,000 villages,” Fadnavis told reporters.
“Maharashtra Remote Sensing Application Center has recorded the longitude and latitude of each project which is undertaken by Jalyukta Shivar Yojna through satellite,” Fadnavis said.
All projects are supervised by MRSAC through satellite, which is having an office at Nagpur, he added. Fadnavis said that results will be seen after the first rains and the state government expects a considerable rise in ground water levels by the time the monsoon is over.
“But we cannot depend only on rain water. It has its limitations. For sustainable farming, water conservation is the only option, and if it becomes a movement, it will bring a revolution in drought prone regions of Maharashtra,” the Chief Minister said.
Amravati division lauded
It may be mentioned here that as man as 4,359 works under Jalyukta Shivar Yojana were completed earlier under Amavati division while the reports of other divisions are still awaited. This flagship programme of the state government is aimed to make the state water-scarcity-free in five years. The Amravati district administration has succeeded in creating 20131 TCM new water storage in 253 villages of the district, thus earning a ‘thumbs-up’ from the Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
Amravati Collector Kiran Gitte, who was the captain of the implementing team, involving 5 departments of the government as players, came in for high praise from Fadnavis, who felicitated him at the inaugural function of the National Agriculture and Orange Festival at Warud on Thursday.
As these works were completed before June 30, this year, the rain water, that got stored there, came as a boon to the farmers during the month long dry period after good early monsoon showers. More than 20,000 farmers could get the direct benefit of this storage which gave a new lease of life to their otherwise dying crops. Many farmers and orange-growers of Morshi-Warud belt admitted this on Monday while talking to Nagpur Today.
