In a bid to pacify the villagers from 48 villages from Jat tehsil from Sangli district which had proposed to go to Karnataka for lack of adequate water, the Shinde Fadnavis government on Sunday announced a provision of Rs 2,000 crore to expedite the implementation of Mhaiskar lift irrigation project.
The Chief Minister Mr Eknath Shinde, who was accompanied by his deputy Mr Devendra Fadnavis after the state cabinet meeting on the eve of the winter session of the state legislature, said with the approval of Rs 2000 crore the Mhaiskar project will be completed on a war footing which will remove the water shortage faced by these villages.
The tender process is expected to begin in January next year
The tender process is expected to begin in January next year. The opposition had blamed the Shinde Fadnavis government for neglect to these villages and remaining silent despite the Karnataka government laying claim over these villages.
In 2016-17, the state had allotted six TMC water to Karnataka. It was then agreed that Karnataka will meet the water demand of Jat from the Tubachi Babaleshwar irrigation project. However, the Karnataka government failed to implement the agreement, and as a result 30,000 hectares of land in the 48 villages were not irrigated.
Mr Fadnavis said that the 48 villages from Jat tehsil had passed the resolution way back in 2013 proposing to go to Karnataka in 2013, when the Congress NCP was ruling Maharashtra. ‘’After that in 2016 the water supply was increased to 77 villages. And now the state government is doing the work of delivering water to the rest of the villages”, he added.
