Finance
Odisha was named the 2nd Best State at the 4th National Water Awards, 2022, for outstanding performance in the field of water resource conservation and management.
Anu Garg, Development Commissioner-cum-Additional Chief Secretary, Water Resources, received the award from the Vice President of India today at a celebration organized by the Ministry of Jal Shakti in Vigyan Bhawan.
Furthermore, Ganjam district has been named the best district in the country for excellent water resource management.
Ganjam Dibya Jyoti Parida, Collector, accepted the award at the occasion.
In recent years, the Department of Water Resources has made great progress in the sustainable development and management of water resources.
Water security has been offered to over four lakh farmers with the construction of 3.2 lakh hectares of extra irrigation facilities. Lower and Upper Indravati Lift Canals, as well as 61 Mega Lift Irrigation Projects, 2833 Community LIPs, and 22,500 Deep Bore Wells, have been completed, assuring geographical and social inclusion.
The Subarnarekha Irrigation Project’s long-pending challenges have been resolved, and irrigation has been delivered to 32,000 hectares.
The implementation of underground pipelines in the distribution systems of all irrigation projects boosted the irrigation efficiency of the projects by more than 20%.
46 In-stream Storage Structures have been installed in various rivers to conserve 49,650 hectare-meters of water with an investment of of Rs 11700 Cr for the conservation of water resources.
Furthermore, through different groundwater conservation initiatives, the state’s groundwater resources have increased from 15.57 billion cubic meters in 2017 to 17.79 billion cubic meters in 2022.
Furthermore, large-scale micro water conservation programs have been implemented across the state as part of the Jal Shakti Abhiyan.
Furthermore, the Department has implemented a number of IT projects to increase openness and improve the Department. GoWater (Water ERP) is used for irrigation management, project monitoring, and flood predictions. PROMISe for accelerating procurement activity; e-CAD application software for tracking CAD and PIM activities; Ama Jalashaya portal for planning water use for multiple purposes across all water bodies; PINSYS is a sophisticated database of WR Engineers for successful human resource management.
WaterDox is a web-enabled interface for storing Department papers and legacy data in digital form so that users can access it for official purposes, among other things.
Involvement of Pani Panchayats in water management and women in water governance are also critical to the Department’s success.
Source:OCN
