Water Resources Minister M.B. Patil has regretted that expect Almatti, no other major reservoir in the State has reached the full level this year.
“The water level in four major dams, including KRS and Harangi, is poor. The total available water is only 43 tmcft while last year, these dams had 55 tmcft of water,” he said. Addressing presspersons after hoisting the National Flag and participating in the Independence Day programme here on Tuesday, he said that this year too, the State was facing drought.
He said that the dams have only 43 tmcft of water, with cities such as Mysuru and Bengaluru requiring 35 tmcft of water for drinking purposes. “In such a grim situation, the government is forced to advise the farmers not to cultivate sugarcane and paddy crops which required huge quantum of water. We have been urging farmers to cultivate more short-term and rain-dependent crops this year as water should be saved for drinking purposes,” he said.
The Minister, however, made it clear that the government has made arrangements for cloud seeding with the hope that it will bring some relief.
With regard to other irrigation projects in the State, mainly those coming under the Upper Krishna Project III, Mr. Patil said that a majority of the projects were being expedited to be completed in a time-bound manner.
He said that infrastructure has been prepared to provide irrigation facility to around 15 lakh acres of land in Vijayapura and Bagalkot districts.
“We are making every effort to make use of 166 tmcft of water which we have received after the final award by Krishna Water Dispute Tribunal,” the Minister said.
Meanwhile, students from various schools expressed anger against the district administration for cancelling the cultural programmes scheduled for Independence Day at the district stadium.
The district administration took the decision of cancelling the cultural programmes considering the huge stagnation of water in the stadium after the heavy rain on Monday night.
Since there was very limited dry space on the ground, it was decided to cancel all the cultural events.
Angry with the decision, the students marched towards the podium demanding that the authorities not cancel the event as they have spent a fortnight in practice sessions.
But their demand was not met and the students returned disappointed.
