Gujarat government on Thursday commenced the construction work of branch canals of the Sardar Sarovar project in north Gujarat with ground digging for the construction of the Vejpur,Malsan,Madka, Rajpura and Amarpura branch canals. A 24.50 km-long Rs. 83 crore Vejpur branch canal will be one of the 42 branch canals of the Narmada canal network. Similarly the Malsan branch canal will be costing Rs.78 crore, Amarpura branch canal Rs. 28 crore and Rajpura canal Rs. 49 crore. All together these branch canals will facilitate irrigation over thousands of hectares of land.

In total, the Narmada waters are to facilitate irrigation in about 4.37 lakh hectare land in north Gujarat’s districts of Patan, Banaskantha and Mahesana.