The State government is considering proposals to build two lift irrigation systems in the Karanja-Manjra river basin.
The projects will use 8.4 tmcft of water from the Krishna river basin and an unspecified amount of unutilised waters from the Godavari basin as per the Bachhawat river water sharing award.
This was decided at a meeting of legislators from Bidar district with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in Bengaluru on Monday. Major Irrigation Minister M.B. Patil and senior officers from his department spoke at the meeting.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has asked officials to prepare detailed project reports for the projects, Eshwar Khandre, district in-charge Minister, who attended the meeting, told The Hindu .
“We asked the Chief Minister to release funds to complete work on the Karanja and other irrigation schemes in the district. We also sought modernisation of the Karanja project, including making the canals leak proof. Another important work that needs to be taken up is to repair the four barrages on the Manjra river that have malfunctioning gates. I told the Chief Minister that the patented Godbole gates have failed. The Chief Minister ordered an inquiry into the incident and instructed the officials to repair them immediately,” Mr. Khandre said.
Another demand was to speed up work on the Atilwal lift irrigation and Karanja lift irrigation schemes.
Mr. Patil suggested lifting water from the Manjra river to the Karanja irrigation canals at two points — one at the 60th kilometre intersection and the the other at 90th kilometre point.
As much as 3 tmcft of water will be used for this.
Another one tmcft of water will be used to fill 12 tanks and the Chulki Nala reservoir.
Modernisation and the new lift irrigation schemes will provide water to around one lakh acres of land, Mr. Khandre said.
In the next phase, “we will push for minor irrigation projects and micro irrigation schemes such as universal drip irrigation to bring at least 25 per cent of the total cultivable land of seven lakh hectares under irrigation,” the Minister said.
MLAs Ashok Kheny and Rajshekar Patil demanded rehabilitation of resettled farmers who had lost land to the Karanja project. They also asked the government to release additional compensation to land losers in deserving cases.
