14 lakh water works to be surveyed in Maharashtra before finalising phase III of Jalyukt Shivar
Mumbai, The Maharashtra government has launched an on-the-spot inspection drive of nearly 14 lakh water conservation works across 34 districts, officials said on Friday.
The initiative is aimed at verifying the utility and condition of structures before finalising the third phase of the flagship Jalyukt Shivar scheme, they said.
A key reason for the task is to prevent duplication of works because different departments are implementing similar schemes for water conservation, an official from the soil and water conservation ministry said.
“The current survey is essential to understand the outcomes of past initiatives and ensure any new projects make optimal use of existing infrastructure,” said Ganesh Patil, secretary of the soil and water conservation department.
He said that based on this data, the department will design the roadmap for phase III of the Jalyukt Shivar.
The Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyaan was started in 2014 to deepen and widen streams, build cement and earthen stop dams, restore nullahs and dig farm ponds to enhance water availability for farming.
According to the Soil and Water Conservation Ministry, the department had earlier requested the Maharashtra Remote Sensing Application Centre in Nagpur to provide satellite imagery of water conservation structures built since the drought of 1972 until 2022, and it has identified and geo-tagged nearly 14 lakh structures implemented by various departments.
These include 39 different types of works such as farm ponds, percolation tanks, check dams, Kolhapur-type weirs, and both earthen and cement nullah bunds, they said, adding that structures built after 2022 will also be incorporated into the database.
A senior official said, “To ensure the effectiveness of these efforts, we are carrying out physical inspections across 34 districts, with a dedicated team for each village, under the supervision of water conservation officers.”
He said teams, comprising agricultural assistants, junior engineers, forest guards, gram panchayat members, women’s self-help groups, farmer producer organisations, and residents, are using a mobile application to reach each water conservation site.
Satellite images of the structures are preloaded in the application that guides them to the exact location. Photographs of the current status of each structure will be uploaded for analysis, he said.
The official said inspection teams will collect detailed data, including the name of the structure, its present condition, the scheme under which it was constructed, the year of execution, expenditure incurred, etc.
Water conservation work in Maharashtra dates back more than 55 to 60 years, spanning multiple departments. However, officials observed that comprehensive data on these works has never been centrally consolidated, nor has their effectiveness been systematically evaluated.
Officials noted that there were complaints of duplicate entries of the same structure by different departments.
The ongoing site visits are expected to resolve such overlaps by identifying the department responsible for each work, the timeline of its execution, and its quality. Any discrepancies or irregularities will also come to light through this process.
The inspection drive has recorded 1,24,678 structures, the highest in the state, in Ahilyanagar district, followed by Pune, Nashik, and Satara districts with more than one lakh structures each, and Sindhudurg has the lowest number at just 56 water conservation projects.
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