2011-20 declared irrigation decade

State Government to make efforts to totally utilise its share of Krishna waters

January 31, 2012 12:13 pm | Updated October 18, 2016 02:46 pm IST - Bangalore:

Prafulatha Bharadwaj, wife of Governor, watching the proceedings while Governor H R Bharadwaj addresses the Joint session at Vidhana Soudha in Bangalore on 30th January 2012. Photo. K. Bhagya Prakash

Prafulatha Bharadwaj, wife of Governor, watching the proceedings while Governor H R Bharadwaj addresses the Joint session at Vidhana Soudha in Bangalore on 30th January 2012. Photo. K. Bhagya Prakash

The State Government has declared 2011-20 as Irrigation Decade and all out efforts will be made for total utilisation of the waters of river Krishna allocated to Karnataka under the Krishna Tribunal Award-2.

In his customary address to a joint session of the State Legislature as envisaged in a new calendar year, Governor H.R. Bhardwaj said: “The Government has decided to take up an ambitious programme to utilise the allocated waters of the Krishna and administrative approval has been accorded for a total project cost of around Rs. 17,000 crore. During the current calendar year, 57,000 hectares of fresh irrigation potential will be created and 1.12 lakh hectares of water logged, saline and alkaline affected areas will be reclaimed for cultivation.”

He said a Centre for Excellence under Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) scheme would be established by reorganising and revamping the existing institutions in the field. The centre would work at formulating IWRM principles for the benefit of farmers.

Property records

The Governor said under a new project , all the urban property ownership records would be computerised in a phased manner using a global information system platform, and to begin with a pilot project would be implemented in five cities. It would enable all the property owners to have authentic records of their properties with a geographical reference.

Mr. Bhardwaj said work relating to expansion of the Bengaluru International Airport at Devanahalli had commenced in an effort to increase the passenger handling capacity of the airport to 17.5 million and new airports at Gulbarga and Shimoga would be operational by July this year.

The district airports were being developed with private sector participation and it included airports at Bijapur and Hassan.

With reference to the Bangalore Metro Rail, he said the northern corridor of 11 km with 10 stations, from Peenya to Sampige Road in Malleswaram would be commissioned by December 2012 and the entire phase-1 would be completed by December 2013. The first reach of 6.7 km of Namma Metro was commissioned on October 20 and it has had “a tremendous response with around 30,000 people using the train, on an average, everyday”.

The Governor said health indicators had improved considerably — infant mortality rate had decreased to 39 from 45, maternal mortality rate is down to 178 from 228 and the total fertility rate down to 2.0 from 2.07 (which is less than the target of 2.1 set by the Union Government). “The institutional deliveries (health) have also improved from 65 per cent to 93 per cent”. To ensure availability of medical officers and other staff in the government hospitals in rural areas and to regulate their transfers, the Karnataka State Civil Services (Regulation of Transfer of Medical officers and other staff) Act , 2011 had been enacted.

He said the State had taken steps to protect the Wakf properties from encroachments.

Nearly 1200 wakf properties across the State had been surveyed and their land records were being computerised. The Government had provided Rs 40 crore for the construction of a Haj Ghar in Bangalore.

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