Irrespective of some delays, Mission Bhagiratha has already taken protected drinking water to another 600 habitations without any fanfare in the areas surrounding Gajwel constituency, where the project was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August for 243 villages.
The initial plan was to provide water to eight other constituencies -- Medchal, Siddipet, Dubbak, Alair, Bhongir, Jangoan, Tungaturthi and Station Ghanpur -- by Dasara in the first phase, but the delays in completing intra-village distribution network made the project authorities to alter their plan. Accordingly, supply of water to about 600 villages of Siddipet, Dubbak, Jangaon and Bhongir constituencies commenced without any publicity. “The delays in intra-village works are on account of care being taken in laying distribution network, although clearances from wildlife, forest and railways also consumed more time than estimated,” authorities of Mission Bhagiratha told The Hindu .
However, about 50 clearances were secured from national highways and another 150 from railways for keeping up the pace of the work. About Rs. 100 crore has been paid to the Forest Department and Rs. 12 crore to railways already.
Official sources admitted that some delays related to Forest Department at the State-level were because of the delay in meeting of the board headed by top administrator of the State. “However, work is apace to supply drinking water under Mission Bhagiratha to 4,500 to 5,000 villages by March-end next,” a key official monitoring the project said.
As for progress of civil works, the officials said that all the 19 intake wells have reached the “safe stage” with seven of them being completed already in all respects, nine in pre-slab stage and another three in side wall construction stage. “We have an action plan to complete all the intake wells by the year-end and out of 50 water treatment plants, 15 have already been completed with 20 scheduled to be completed by March-end next, 13 more by June-end next and another 3 by August-end next,” the officials explained.
Besides, construction of electrical sub-stations, over-head and ground-level balancing reservoirs is also progressing as per the schedule and an amount of Rs. 6,500 crore has already been paid to the executing agencies. “The project management is maintaining a fund of Rs. 3,000 crore all through to prevent delays in payments,” the officials said.
