State to hold elections to water bodies

Elections to Water Users Associations were last held in 2008

After cooperative societies, the State government is now gearing up to hold elections to Water Users Associations (WUAs) which were pending for the past few years.

Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy on Sunday approved the file for conduct of elections to about 56,000 territorial constituencies which formed part of 11,000 WUAs, a release from the Chief Minister’s Office said.

Purpose

The elections for water bodies were last held in 2008 under the Andhra Pradesh Farmers Management of Irrigation Systems Act, 1997, with the aim to promote participatory management of irrigation systems and efficient use of water resources.

The legislation, covering one crore irrigated land and 60 lakh farmers, followed the Rajya Sabha pattern of retiring one-third of elected members every two years. As such, one-third members retired in January 2010 and the other one-third in January last year. The term of the balance one-third would expire next year. The release said the present elections would be held for 55,528 (two-thirds) of the total 80,820 territorial constituencies in the State.

The elected members will elect bodies to Water Users Associations of medium and major irrigation projects. Elections will also be held to distributory and project committees.

There are 10,749 WUAs, 342 distributory committees and 86 major and medium project committees.

Territorial constituencies

The largest number of 4,536 territorial constituencies which are going to polls are located in Nalgonda, followed by Krishna (3,660), Nellore (3,608), Warangal (3,460), Guntur (3,444) and Karimnagar (3,420). The least number is in Ranga Reddy (740).