DHARWAD: The State Government has released Rs. 424 crore for improvement of rural water supply, including Rs. 173 crore released by the Union Government, Minister for Rural Water Supply and Sugar S.A. Ravindranath has said.

He was speaking to presspersons after conducting a review meeting here on Tuesday. The Government had submitted proposals for 162 projects worth Rs. 849 crore to the Centre for consideration under the Rajiv Gandhi Sub Mission.

To a query, the Minister clarified that there was no dearth of funds for drinking water supply projects.

He informed that the Jala Nirmala Scheme was being implemented in 11 districts of North Karnataka.

Drinking water supply projects worth Rs. 927 crore to be implemented over a period of four years had been taken up under the scheme.

An amount of Rs. 91.3 crore had been released for water supply projects in Belgaum division. Of this, Rs. 53 crore had been spent so far.

Status of works

While some works had been completed, the officials had been directed to complete the remaining works before April 15, he said.

In Dharwad, district projects had been taken up at Rs. 11 crore of which Rs. 6.32 crore had been spent.

On the problems of sugarcane growers, he said all the sugar factories have been asked to crush sugarcane till the end of April in view of the surplus yield in the current year. The Government was planning to give financial aid to sugarcane growers on the lines of Maharashtra, he said.

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