DeshGujarat

Ahmedabad, 18 July 2012

Narmada Nigam officials and State Reserve Police jawans on Tuesday started a massive operation to unearth and remove all illegal water lifting pipelines connected to the Maliya branch of Narmada canal in Halvad belt of Surendranagar district.

The authorities have hired JCB machines to unearth and remove the illegal pipelines laid in government land attached to Narmada branch canal.

According to Narmada Nigam officer SR Yadav, the land between gutter and canal, and two meter land next to gutter is owned by government.

More than 500 local farmers gathered to protest the demolition work. They were told that because of illegal water lifting menace in their area, the other areas of Saurashtra don’t get sufficient supply of drinking water. “When there’s a limited amount of water, feeding people is more important than feeding the farms, you should understand this,” the farmers were told.

The larger picture

Out of total 202 reservoirs in Gujarat, 14 have more than 31% water storage, 18 have 20-29% water, 26 have 11-19% water, 136 have less than 10% water.

Only Vanakbori reservoir has 96.03% water, while Sardar Sarovar has 78.31% water storage. 17 reservoirs in north Gujarat have 31.53% water.

50 dams of Saurashtra-Kutch area have negligible water storage left. Saurashtra’s 135 dams have only 8% live water storage at present.