Govt plans to tackle drought in every district in the state

A district irrigation plan will ascertain water requirement for each plot to determine supply

MUMBAI: In the wake of a drought situation that has led to an agrarian crisis in Maharashtra, the state government has started preparing a district irrigation plan (DIP) for all districts. The exercise will help the government ascertain the minimum water requirement for each farm land and accordingly make plans for the scientific management of water.

Drought has become a permanent feature in the agrarian sector of the state in the past few years. According to a rough estimation, nearly 25 lakh farmers have lost their crops partly or entirely this financial year. Poor rainfall — 59.4% of the annual average — has resulted in crop loss on 53.10 lakh hectares comprising 15,747 villages from 21 districts, which account for nearly 35% of the state’s total area.

To overcome the situation, the state needs a permanent solution that can be made once the requirement of agricultural land is determined right from block level to district level. “DIP will give minimum requirement of water of each farm land, based on which plans will be made to make water available to them,” said Dinesh Kumar Jain, additional chief secretary (agriculture and marketing).

The DIP includes — area wise and crop wise irrigation status, production and productivity

of major crops and status of ground water availability. It also will have village-level details that will be consolidated into a blocklevel plan, which will evolve into a DIP that can be used to fine-tune the existing irrigation system, an officer from the agriculture department said.

Vijay Jawambhia, an agriculture expert from Vidarbha, welcomed the move. He, however, stressed on the need for restrictions over lifting of water. “Things are not going to work if the government does not restrict lifting of water to hold ground water going down further,” Jawambhia told HT. MUMBAI: More than two weeks ago, a website was launched for Mumbaiites to complain about illegal construction and encroachment in their areas. But the only complaint the website has got so far is about glitches in accessing it and problems with logging in.

The website was drawn into controversy the day it was launched – Shiv Sena MP Rahul Shewale and Mayor Snehal Ambekar had launched it but no official from the civic administration or antiencroachment department were present.

Sources in the know said the website had glitches because it is still being tested and officers in most of the 24 wards are still getting trained to use it. The website was launched before necessary procedures were completed, sources said.

Civic officials refrained from commenting about the launch, but said the problems with the website will be resolved in a week.

When HT contacted Ambekar to find out why the website was launched without the civic administration’s presence, she said, “We were supposed to launch the website a long time ago, but it got delayed. There were no officials present, as it was a holiday for the BMC.”

The site’s software has been designed on the lines of the BMC’S pothole tracking system — now defunct — that citizens used to file complaints about potholes in their areas and track if officials had acted on the complaint.

The objective of this new portal , on www.removalofencroachment. com, is to give citizens a way to report inconveniences and problems related to the Removal of Encroachment department. The website would allow citizens to file complaints, upload photographs and even tag the spot on a map.