‘Water is prasad, nobody has right to waste’

PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi on Monday said that nobody has the right to waste a drop of Narmada water being pumped to reservoirs in Saurashtra as part of Saurashtra Narmada Avtaran Irrigation (SAUNI) Yojana as the project was being funded by taxes collected from the poor.

“The Gujarat government has estimated a budget of Rs 16,000 crore to pump water by SAUNI Yojana... If we channel water through open canals, the expense can be less. But we decided that we will pump water through pipelines as only then can we take water to the last farm .... I request all brothers and sisters, I request the entire Gujarat. These pipelines have been laid by taxes collected from the poorest of Gujarat. This is an attempt to supply water to the poorest. This water is a prasad (gift) of God. Neither me nor you have any right to waste a drop of it,” Modi said.

The PM was addressing a public meeting here after dedicating to the public phase-i of Link-ii of SAUNI Yojana. The Linkii pipeline canal has been designed to pump Narmada water into 17 dams in Botad, Bhavnagar and Amreli districts. The be 257-km line will have capacity to carry 258 million cubic metres of water.

The PM also praised Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan for his yatra to conserve the Narmada. Meanwhile, in Jabalpur, BJP president Amit Shah said that after completion of the Narmada Sewa Yatra campaign, the river will be ranked among the cleanest in the world.

The PMO tweeted, “Water is a ‘prasad’ from nature. This is being done so that our farmers are happy. Work happened with great effort, not via short cuts.”