Bhubaneswar: The State of Odisha has been conferred with the coveted 4th National Water Awards, 2022 today as the 2nd Best State for the outstanding work done in the field of water resources conservation and management. Anu Garg, the Development Commissioner-cum-Additional Chief Secretary of Water Resources received the award from the Vice President of India, in presence of Minister, Jal Shakti at a function organised by the Ministry of Jal Shakti, Govt. of India at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi today.
Besides, Ganjam district has also been adjudged the Best District in the country in efficient water resources management. Dibya Jyoti Parida, the Collector of Ganjam district received the award in the function.
The Department of Water Resources has made remarkable progress in recent years in sustainable development and management of water resources. More than four lakh farmers have been provided water security by creating additional irrigation facilities of 3.2 lakh hectares. Two major projects i.e., Lower Indra and Upper Indravati Lift Canal; 61 Mega Lift Irrigation Projects, 2833 Community LIPs and 22,500 Deep Bore Wells have been completed thereby ensuring geographical and social inclusiveness. Long pending issues of Subarnarekha Irrigation Projects have been resolved and irrigation has been provided to 32,000 hectares. The irrigation efficiency of the projects has been increased by more than 20% through adoption of underground pipeline in the distribution systems of all categories of irrigation projects.
For conservation of water resources, 46 In-stream Storage Structures have been taken up in various rivers to conserve 49,650 hectare-meter of water with an investment of Rs 11700 Cr. Besides, the ground water resources of the State has also increased from 15.57 billion cubic meters in 2017 to 17.79 billion cubic meters in 2022 through various ground water conservation measures. Further, large scale micro water conservation activities have been taken up under the Jal Shakti Abhiyan throughout the state.
Besides, a series of IT initiatives have been introduced by the Department to bring in transparency and transformation in the Department. They are: GoWater (Water ERP) for irrigation management, project monitoring and flood forecasting; PROMISe for expediting procurement work; e-CAD application software for tracking CAD and PIM activities; Ama Jalashaya portal, covering all the water bodies for planning water use for multiple purposes; PINSYS is a robust database of WR Engineers for effective HRM; WaterDox is a web enabled interface to store documents and legacy data of the Department in digital form to be accessible to users for official purpose etc.
Involvement of Pani Panchayats in water management and women in water governance are also key to the success of the Department.
