The State government has not released any information on the actual area irrigated by various irrigation projects — something the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had demanded when it was in the Opposition. The Economic Survey released on Monday shows the information as “Not available” from 2010-11 to 2016-17.
The BJP, as the Opposition in 2013, had levelled allegations of a multi-thousand crore irrigation scam and claimed that successive Congress governments had not managed to increase area under irrigation. It had demanded that the then Congress-NCP government declare the area irrigated, and had vowed to rectify the matter when in power.
In the surveys published in the last five years under the BJP-Shiv Sena government, no such information has been released. When asked about it, Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar said, “A committee has been formed to device a formula to calculate the area under irrigation. Once it gives its report, the data will be announced.”
The BJP had targeted NCP leaders, especially Ajit Pawar and Sunil Tatkare, for their alleged involvement in the scam in the 2014 Assembly poll campaign. In the last five years, no accused leader has been arrested nor has the investigation moved forward despite the court seeking a status report.
