Odisha Adjudged 2nd Best State For Water Resources Conservation and Management

Bhubaneswar: Odisha has been conferred with 4th National Water Awards,2022 today as the 2nd Best State for the water resources conservation and management.

Development Commissioner-cum-Additional Chief Secretary, Water Resources Anu Garg received the award from the Vice President of India Jagdeep Dhankhar, in the presence of Jal Shakti Minister, Govt of India, at a function organised by the Ministry in Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi.

Besides, Ganjam district has been adjudged the Best District in the country for efficient water resources management. Ganjam Collector Dibya Jyoti Parida received the award at the function.

The Department of Water Resources has made remarkable progress in recent years in the sustainable development and management of water resources. More than four lakh farmers have been provided water security by creating additional irrigation facilities of 3.2 lakh hectares.

Two major projects i.e. Lower Indra and Upper Indravati lift canal, 61 mega lift irrigation projects, 2,833 Community LIPs and 22,500 deep borewells have been completed, thereby ensuring geographical and social inclusiveness. Long pending issues of the Subarnarekha Irrigation Project have been resolved and irrigation has been provided to 32,000 hectares of farmlands.

The irrigation efficiency of the projects has been increased by more than 20 per cent through the adoption of underground pipelines in the distribution systems of all categories of irrigation projects.

For the conservation of water resources, 46 in-stream storage structures have been taken up in various rivers to conserve 49,650 hectare-meter of water with an investment of Rs 11,700 crore.

Besides, the groundwater resources of the State has also increased from 15.57 billion cubic meters in 2017 to 17.79 billion cubic meters in 2022, through various groundwater conservation measures.

Further, large-scale micro water conservation activities have been taken up under the Jal Shakti Abhiyan throughout the state.

Besides, a series of IT initiatives have been introduced by the Department to bring in transparency and transformation. Those are: Go Water (Water ERP) for irrigation management, project monitoring and flood forecasting, promise for expediting procurement work, e-CAD application software for tracking CAD and PIM activities, Ama Jalashaya portal, covering all the water bodies for planning water use for multiple purposes, Pinsys’s robust database of WR engineers for effective HRM, Water Dox web-enabled interface to store documents and legacy data of the Department in digital form to be accessible to users for official purpose etc.

Involvement of Pani Panchayats in water management and women in water governance is also key to the success of the Department.