Water Resource Minister M.B. Patil has promised that work on the Bennethora Major Irrigation Project in Kalaburagi district in the Krishna Basin, the Karanja Major Irrigation Project in Bidar district in the Godavari Basin and the Lower Mullamari Medium Irrigation Project in Kalaburagi district in the Krishna Basin will be completed in all respects and water provided to the command area by the end of December 2016.
Addressing presspersons after visiting the canal network modernisation work under the Bennethora Major Irrigation Project at Harsur village in Chitapur taluk in Kalaburagi district on Monday, Mr. Patil said that all bottlenecks in providing water to the command area under the project are being overcome in all the three projects. Also, the canal network is being strengthened and modernised to ensure that the water reached all fields in the command area.
The Minister, who later visited the Lower Mullamari Project in Chincholi taluk, said that he would visit the Karanja Major Irrigation Project and inspect the canal network and review the progress of the work with the officials of the project in Bidar on Tuesday.
The original allocation of water for the Karanja project was 13.10 tmcft [later revised to 9.27 tmcft]. Though the allocation was downsized further to 4.59 tmcft due to the reduced availability of water in the project, even this [reduced allocation of 4.59 tmcft] water had not been utilised even once in a single year so far.
While the Bennethora project envisages irrigation potential of 21,000 hectares, the command area in the Karanja project was nearly 30,000 hectares and the command area of the Lower Mullamari Project was 9,713 hectares.
Mr. Patil said that as work to modernise the canal network has gained pace in the Bennethora project, it is proposed to provide water to 5,000 hectares of command area in the Right Bank Canal and 2,000 hectares of command area in the Left Bank Canal during the kharif season. The remaining command area would be covered under irrigation network by the end of December this year.
Minister of State for Medical Education Sharanprakash Patil, Minister for Municipal Administration Qamarul Islam, Principal Secretary, Water Resource Department, Rakesh Singh and Chief Engineer of the Kalaburagi Irrigation Zone Jagannath Halangi were present.
