Pawan Kumar Bansal addresses the consultative committee meeting of Ministry of Water Resources on 9 Nov,Monday

Pawan Kumar Bansal addresses the consultative committee meeting of Ministry of Water Resources on 9 Nov,Monday
While addressing the Consultative Committee Meeting of the Ministry of Water Resources on the subject “Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme (AIBP)” here on Monday, Pawan Kumar Bansal, the Union Minister of Water Resources said that water resources management plays an important role in the development of irrigation facilities and in improving the productivity and thereby ensuring food security.

The Government of India laid considerable emphasis during the initial Five Years Plans and which resulted in considerable development of the irrigation potential. Irrigation potential at the beginning of the first plan was about 22.6 million hectares which at present is at the level of about 106 million hectares. Bansal opined that we have to go a long way to achieve the ultimate irrigation potential of about 140 million hectares. As a matter of fact, we have to work towards creation of irrigation potential beyond 140 million hectares through better water management practices. However, this is a challenging task. The easy and best options for the development of water resources projects have since been tapped and new water resources development projects are bound to be more challenging from the view point of hydrological features and topographical constraints. The Minister said that today, we face many challenges in water sector, like declining per capita water availability, deterioration in water quality, decline in ground water table in some areas due to over-exploitation, etc. Of course, we continue to face recurring problems of flood and drought. These issues get further compounded when we look at the future scenario. With population growth, industrialisation and urbanisation, the water demand for various purposes is increasing day-by-day. He emphasised that in order to overcome the temporal variations, we have to resort to various means of conservation of water resources. The high spatial variation can be addressed through various measures for diverting surplus water from identified regions to deficient basins or regions.

The Members of Parliament present include:- Prabha Kishor Taviad, Ijyaraj Singh, Gajendra Singh Rajukhedi, Mohan Jena, Jyoti Mirdha, G S Basavaraj, Devji M Patel, Kirodilal Meena (Lok Sabha) , Prabha Thakur, Syeda Anwara Taimur and Gyan Prakash Pilania (Rajya Sabha). The Secretary, Water Resources U N Pujiar and senior officers of the Ministry were present in the meeting.

Courtesy: Ministry of Water Resources