The Hindu : Karnataka News : Minor irrigation census launched

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 15, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka

Minor irrigation census launched

Special Correspondent

Every source of irrigation will be assessed

GULBARGA: The Fourth Minor Irrigation Census has been launched in the State to record the area under minor irrigation schemes, groundwater levels in different regions and the pattern of irrigation preferred by the people and the status of the minor irrigation projects, including lift irrigation projects.

Sources told The Hindu here on Monday that the Union Government provided funds for the census. Every source of irrigation would be assessed and performance recorded. Officials of various departments, including minor irrigation, zill a panchayat and water resources department, would be involved in the work. The sources said the census would include groundwater irrigation and surface water irrigation sources. The enumerators would visit the individual sources of minor irrigation and assess their performance and to what extent the potential had been tapped.

The sources said the census would cover three types of groundwater sources, including opens wells and borewells used for irrigation, and two types of surface irrigation sources, including the gravity flow irrigation and lift irrigation. It would cover projects having irrigation potential of up to 2,000 hectares.

While the 0 to 4 hectare minor irrigation sources were managed by the taluk panchayats, sources with the irrigation potential from 4 to 40 acres are managed by the zilla panchayats. The minor irrigation projects having a command area up to 2,000 hectares were managed and maintained by the Minor Irrigation Department.

The census will cover the lift irrigation projects managed by the Minor Irrigation Department and the efficacy of different irrigation projects in vogue and record the new irrigation projects taken up and the command areas added in the past five years. The third census of the minor irrigation projects was conducted five years ago.

In Gulbarga district, there were 181 minor irrigation projects having an irrigation potential of 31,004 hectares. Apart from this, other minor irrigation projects, including the lift irrigation schemes, had covered 12,895 hectares of command area through 43 projects. With the help of 54 barrages, the district had an irrigation potential of 8,061 hectares. In all, the district had an irrigation potential of 51,960 hectares command area with the help of different minor irrigation schemes.

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